{
 "id": "walt-whitman/the-artillerymans-vision",
 "title": "The Artilleryman’s Vision",
 "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": 168,
 "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": 25,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 142,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "While my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over long,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And my head on the pillow rests at home, and the vacant midnight passes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And through the stillness, through the dark, I hear, just hear, the breath of my infant,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There in the room as I wake from sleep this vision presses upon me;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The engagement opens there and then in fantasy unreal,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The skirmishers begin, they crawl cautiously ahead, I hear the irregular snap! snap!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I hear the sounds of the different missiles, the short t-h-t! t-h-t! of the rifle-balls,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I see the shells exploding leaving small white clouds, I hear the great shells shrieking as they pass,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The grape like the hum and whirr of wind through the trees, (tumultuous now the contest rages,)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All the scenes at the batteries rise in detail before me again,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The crashing and smoking, the pride of the men in their pieces,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The chief-gunner ranges and sights his piece and selects a fuse of the right time,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "After firing I see him lean aside and look eagerly off to note the effect;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Elsewhere I hear the cry of a regiment charging, (the young colonel leads himself this time with brandish’d sword,)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I see the gaps cut by the enemy’s volleys, (quickly fill’d up, no delay,)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I breathe the suffocating smoke, then the flat clouds hover low concealing all;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now a strange lull for a few seconds, not a shot fired on either side,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then resumed the chaos louder than ever, with eager calls and orders of officers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While from some distant part of the field the wind wafts to my ears a shout of applause, (some special success,)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And ever the sound of the cannon far or near, (rousing even in dreams a devilish exultation and all the old mad joy in the depths of my soul,)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And ever the hastening of infantry shifting positions, batteries, cavalry, moving hither and thither,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(The falling, dying, I heed not, the wounded dripping and red I heed not, some to the rear are hobbling,)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Grime, heat, rush, aides-de-camp galloping by or on a full run,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With the patter of small arms, the warning s-s-t of the rifles, (these in my vision I hear or see,)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And bombs bursting in air, and at night the vari-color’d rockets.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}