Poetry by Walt Whitman, book design by Lawrence Jay Switzer. Large format 12" x 12" illustrated and and printed on heavy artists' stock. This volume of the Walt Whitman Series features a selection of the poet’s Civil War poems. The title’s origin is in the Battle Hymn of the Republic: “He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible, swift sword.” While they are reflections of the fateful lightning that struck America, these poems are almost totally non-political in nature, only rarely and tangentially touching upon the fiery issues of the day: slavery, secession, generals, battles, defeats, victories. As a volunteer in the various army hospitals scattered around Washington City, Whitman gained intimate insights into the hearts and minds of the soldiers who fought on both sides of the conflict. His poems are not about the horrific wounds sustained by those fighting men, or about the many unidentified dead that littered the American landscape like broken dolls. Instead he fixes his gaze on the human face beneath the gauze, the heart of the woman behind the kitchen curtain who anxiously awaits a letter from her enlisted son, the last touch of a hand, the final whispered words. Prefaced by an essay by the designer: “When Johnny Did Not Come Marching Home.” Illustrated with drawings and engravings of the day, and most especially, with haunting daguerreotypes and tintypes of the soldiering men in both blue and gray.