A moment in the American Civil War is written down by Walt Whitman’s Cavalry Crossing a Ford. It is about a cavalry unit crossing an unknown river. The poet is simply showing the soldiers from a variety of points and at the same time tests the reader’s understanding of the word “cavalry”. It takes away the militaristic side of the term and in its place uses the imagery of a group of men. The poem starts by the poet observing the soldiers from far away, as a “line in long array”. He then proceeds to move to a point where he sees that “each person is a picture,” then moves far away again, meanwhile the flags are waving “gaily in the wind” right above the soldiers. The title of the poem is representative of very strong, real image unlike the language …show more content…
The flags are “scarlet” and “snowy white,” they have not been dirtied or scarred by battles unlike the men. The way they wave is also different with the way the soldiers are mounted. In the end, it is up to the reader’s discretion to think where the flags are acting an image that unifies, or as a completely different thing from the horses, river, and the soldiers. In Robert Frost’s Acquainted With The Night, he uses symbols and images to set a tone of not only seclusion but also silence and loneliness. These tones are induced by the themes of night, rain, and incredible height. However just as these images are representative of these tones, Frost seems to also endorse a feeling of likeness in his fleeing of the city into the silent dimness of the adjacent countryside. The “luminary clock” symbolizes time, whether it be man made or natural. This clock seen by the author at “an unearthly height,” can be understood as the shining moon or literally just a clock located in a very high tower in the city. But natural or man-made, this clock means a lot to the poet as he observes it from the outside of the city. The poet says that the clock “proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right,” which suggests some sort of vagueness related to his time and