A bleak and haunting poem about the loss of a young soldier during the Civil War. This poem, reprinted here as it appeared in the “Pittston Gazette” of Pittston, Pennsylvania in the fall of 1864, explores the grief and loss caused by the conflict through the loss of a single wounded soldier’s life in a military hospital ward.

 

“Into a ward of the whitewashed halls,

Where the dead and dying lay,

Wounded by bayonets, shells and balls,

Somebody’s darling was borne one day –

Somebody’s darling, so you and so brave,

Wearing yet on his pale sweet face,

Soon to be hid by the dust of the grave,

The lingering light of his boyhood’s grace.

Matted and damp are the curls of gold,

Kissing the snow of that fair young brow;

Pale are the lips of delicate mould –

Somebody’s darling is dying now.

Back from his beautiful blue-veined brow

Brush all the wandering waves of gold,

Cross his hands on his bosom now,

Somebody’s darling is still and cold.

Kiss him one for somebody’s sake,

Murmur a prayer soft and low;

One bright curl from its fair mates take,

They were somebody’s pride, you know;

Somebody’s hand hath rested there –

Was it a mother’s, soft and white?

And have the lips of a sister fair

Been baptized in the waves of light?

God knows best! He has somebody’s love;

Somebody’s heart enshrined him there;

Somebody’s wafted his name above,

Night and more, on the wings of prayer.

Somebody wept when he marched away,

Looking so handsome, brave and grand;

Somebody’s kiss on his forehead lay,

Somebody clung to his parting hand.

Somebody’s waiting and watching for him,

Yearning to hold him again to their heart;

And there he lies with his blue eyes dim,

And the smiling child-like lips apart.

Tendering bury the fair young dead,

Passing to drop on his grave a tear;

Carve on the wooden slab at his head,

‘Somebody’s darling slumbers here.’”