LOOK down, fair moon, and bathe this scene;
Pour softly down night's nimbus floods, on faces ghastly, swollen,
purple;
On the dead, on their backs, with their arms toss'd wide,
Pour down your unstinted nimbus, sacred moon.
This short poem is symbolic - the dead, lying out in the open (presumably from the Civil War) , surely deserve honor and illumination by the eternal moon.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
Jane: I read Whitman’s intention here as ironic. Nature is indifferent to man’s inhumanity to man, disguising and making bearable even the most dreadful of sights.