A poem about the Civil war. A poem about cowardice and about heroism. A poem that is able to make the reader feel as if he knows what it is like to lose someone that he cared for. Stephen Crane’s (author of The Red Badge Of Courage) poem, “Do Not Weep, Maiden, For War Is Kind,” is a tale of soldiers dying while fighting in the Civil War. It contains three different stories addressed to three different people. Each story is telling a certain person, a wife, a daughter, and then a mother, about the death of someone they cared for. Words and phrases were obviously very wisely chosen to make some of the stanzas complete. Lines like “Because your lover threw wild arms toward the sky; and the affrighted steed ran on alone” (lines 2-3) paint a picture so vivid in any reader’s mind that it proves Crane to be a true concrete artist in the field of only amateur Picassos. “Because your father stumbled in yellow trenches, Raged at his breast, gulped and died” (lines 13-14) is another example of how Crane is able to remind any person, who has ever seen a movie or a TV show about the war, of how a soldier can die. The writing, in a way, makes the reader feel as though he is around at the time when the story is told. The perfect wording that is chosen makes it even more realistic as a lump grows in the throat of the person who is experiencing the poem for the first time. An actual sense of sympathy and pain grows inside as the story is told to the wife. Confusion and ambiguity of the child can be felt as the stanza that pertains to her is read. Also, the loss of hope and desire can be sensed as the mother accepts the story of her son’s death. The title itself, “War Is Kind”, sets an oxy-moronic stage for the reader as they continue to venture into something that they are unfamiliar with. It sounds strange to hear something so absurd that it is only second nature to reread the title to make certain it was read correctly the first time. Before being dissected and examined, the story sounds grim and not exactly what the title makes it seem. War is a horrible thing. It is death, blood, enemies, and hatred all balled into one and fought between people who have never met and have no grudges with each other except for what their countries told them to have. War is Hell on earth and Crane most likely realized that as he was writing this poem. The way that Crane wrote the poem can be interpreted in several ways. It can be a poem about cowardice turned to heroism, as in a soldier running from his fears during the war only to be shot and killed. War will be kind to his death because no one will remember him as a coward, but instead for the hero that died in the war fighting for his country. It can be interpreted as a poem about pure heroism and only telling of how the soldier fought for his loved ones and country and died doing so. Either way, Crane’s story of the Civil War is a poem that leaves a true mark in the mind of the reader, making one see historic battle in more than one way. Interpreting the poem from the point of view of cowardice turned to heroism takes some extra reading and researching to realize what aspect Crane is writing from. Crane was alive during the Civil War and was a Confederate living in the South. His book The Red Badge of Courage was also about the Civil War and a soldier who was wounded while running away. From the wound on his chest everyone thought that this soldier was a hero; and the soldier kept the secret about how he really got it. Certain words in this poem set a tone that make it easy to believe this poem could be about the same thing. “Because your father tumbled in yellow trenches, Raged at his breast, gulped and died,” (lines 13-14) is one of the quotes that contains key words. The word ‘yellow’ in line 13 refers not to the color, but the personality of the soldiers. Being yellow is a term for a coward, and the line mentions ‘yellow trenches’ because it means the trenches are filled with cowardly Confederates. It is filled with the Confederates soldiers because the color of their uniforms were gray and yellow, which is another way the word ‘yellow’ is used to add the image. The soldier “Raged at his breast, gulped and died,” because he was killed while hiding in this trench which makes him a hero for dying in the war. Nobody will be able to tell that he was hiding when he was killed. Another bit of information that helps the reader to understand Crane’s viewpoint is the quote “Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky, And the affrighted steed ran on alone,” (lines 2-3). The soldier was shot while escaping on his horse. The section of the line that mentions how the horse ran on alone shows this because the horse did not run into the Union army or into any other group of soldiers. It ran away into the clear, which implies the soldier was running away from the fighting. The soldier dies on the battlefield making him a hero and not a coward for trying to escape. On the other hand, this poem can show how the soldier was a true hero. “Mother whose heart hung humble as a button, On the bright splendid shroud of your son,” (line 23-24) shows this in perfect detail. The mother is proud of her son. She knows that he died fighting for his family and country. Of course, she is sad that he is gone now, which is shown by the line telling that her heart hung humble as a button on the bright splendid shroud of her son. She is upset and her heart simply hangs, which is a term for someone in grief. He might have died a coward, but nothing anyone can say will make her feel any different about him. The tone of the rest of the poem makes it hard to see the way of her son’s death any different than that of the others mentioned in the other two stories. This causes the reader to believe that the mother’s son died the same, as a coward. It is true that the way Crane wrote the poem can be interpreted in several ways. It could be a poem about cowardice turned into heroism or it can be interpreted as a poem about pure heroism. The way it is interpreted relies solely on the mind of the reader and how he thinks the story should go. The evidence found in the poem helps point out how it could be a story of cowardice turned into heroism for the soldiers, or it could be interpreted in a totally different way. This poem easily can be understood as a true story or a poem about something that only Crane knew about. How is it possible to know if all of our dead soldiers died fighting and not fleeing from the fight? The answer is, it isn’t. The only reasonable truth about death in a war is that the person is dead. It is the best to see their death as a heroic dead and not a cowardly response. But after reading Stephen Crane’s “Do Not Weep, Maiden, For War Is Kind” it makes any person wonder how any of the soldiers sent off to war really died.

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