{
 "id": "walt-whitman/by-the-bivouacs-fitful-flame",
 "title": "By the Bivouac’s Fitful Flame",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Walt Whitman",
 "poet_slug": "walt-whitman",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Leaves of Grass",
 "book_slug": "leaves-of-grass",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 154,
 "container": "Drum-Taps",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1865,
  "venue": "Drum-Taps (New York, 1865)",
  "note": "Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the 1865 Drum-Taps scan. The corpus text follows the 1891–92 arrangement, by which the poem had been revised. First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/waltwhitmansdrum00whit"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass",
  "file": "drum-taps.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1322",
   "https://archive.org/details/leavesgrass03whitgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 10,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 82,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "By the bivouac’s fitful flame,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A procession winding around me, solemn and sweet and slow⁠—but first I note,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The tents of the sleeping army, the fields’ and woods’ dim outline,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The darkness lit by spots of kindled fire, the silence,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The shrubs and trees, (as I lift my eyes they seem to be stealthily watching me,)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While wind in procession thoughts, O tender and wondrous thoughts,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of life and death, of home and the past and loved, and of those that are far away;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A solemn and slow procession there as I sit on the ground,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By the bivouac’s fitful flame.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}