Walt Whitman volunteered in the hospitals of Washington, D.C. during much of the Civil War, and he was profoundly moved by the experience. In Naginski’s setting of “Look Down, Fair Moon,” piano and voice reflect as stunned comrades upon the tragic essence of the poet’s words.

Look Down, Fair Moon
by Walt Whitman

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 arms toss’d wide,
Pour down your unstinted nimbus, sacred moon.