Dirge For Two Veterans Poem Analysis

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The Setting and the Scene: Dirge for two Veterans
The poem “Dirge For Two Veterans” by Walt Whitman is an emotional story of a father-son funeral during the civil war and Whitman 's interpretation. The poems basis of the agony caused by death is counteracted by the beauty of the world. Whitman conveys his emotions using tone to directly relate to his feelings and imagery to indirectly capture his raw emotions concerning the deaths of the two soldiers. The emotional drama shown in the poem “Dirge For Two Veterans” is about more than death, it is about what the tragedy and pain that is death, and the confusing struggle to find beauty and peace in the midst of it.
The poem starts off with with a observational description of the sunset and “double grave”. As the sun sets, the “ghastly, phantom moon” is called “beautiful over the house-tops”. It is then that Whitman begins to describe a …show more content…

The story describes a morbid situation of a dead father and son, but Whitman tries to describe everything around them as beautiful. One might imagine Whitman 's struggling with his emotions, trying to find the beauty of the world in this story. He sets the story by describing the sunset as “beautiful” and the ascending moon as “immense and silent” as if the story will be one of peace. Then as the poem continues, the sounds of drums are “convulsive” and the ‘pavement has faded’ as if Whitman is losing heart. Stories of death are tragic, but the fact that the two decided are father add son is heartbreaking. In the second to last stanza, the surge of emotion is evident. “O strong dead-march!” the tone of this is anguish, Whitman is in agony of this funeral procession and is crying out in thanksgiving for his own life as well as the “veterans, passing to burial”. The emotional drama shown here is the beauty of the world is the wretchedness of the

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