Come Up from the Fields, Father

Walt Whitman’s poem “Come up from the fields, father” is a poignant and dramatic scene of a rural Ohio family who receives news that their beloved son has been injured in battle. But his injuries were so grave that he was not able to write the letter himself; the letter is not in his handwriting. By the time the family receives the letter, the young man has died, leaving the mother in a deep state of mourning. Whitman served as a nurse in a Washington, D.C. hospital during the Civil War and probably wrote such letters himself.