UNNAMED REMAINS THE BRAVEST SOLDIER

This entry stood out to me because it seems as if Whitman were to just break the paragraph into lines, he would have a poem. This entry seems to be written in more poetic language and seems more than just a quick jotting down of a journal entry. What bothered me about it was that it glorifies war and dying and this seems strange to me since Whitman saw the war as terrible. How could one look at it any other way? This line in particularly, made me wince : "haply with pain and suffering (yet less, far less, than is supposed,)..." Really? I'd like to ask Whitman if he ever had ever felt what it was like to slowly die of a gunshot wound. On the other hand, I was also delighted by his use of language. For instance this last line of the entry is beautiful: "...the last lethargy winds like a serpent round him -- the eyes glaze in death -- none recks -- perhaps the burial-squads, in truce, a week afterwards, search not the secluded spot -- and there, at last, the Bravest Soldier crumbles in mother earth, unburied and unknown." Reading this again, I wonder if Whitman is using subtle satire here to express his views on the horrors of war as the serpent could indicate evil and the fact that these are our most wonderful men, yet they are "unknown."