Walt Whitman's poem "A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim" is rather self-explanatory since the title, which is the same as the first line, indicates that it is dawn. Whitman, the speaker, walks toward the hospital tent where he works as a volunteer.

During the Civil War, Walt Whitman traveled to Virginia to care for his brother George, who was wounded at the first battle of Fredericksburg. While he attended his brother who was not badly injured, Whitman experienced other horrors of war. For, he witnessed the suffering of hundreds of other men when he helped assist in the medical field units and hospitals.

This poem is a poignant description of Whitman's sights and feelings in the army camp. Whitman's tender and heartfelt remarks, his calling himself brother, and his calling the face of the third soldier the "face of Christ himself" gives to the dead soldiers a martyr's sainthood.