How is the poem "A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim" different from “I Hear America Singing”? Poems by Walt Whitman.

In Walt Whitman's poems, "A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak
Gray and Dim," and "I Hear America Singing" are very different
poems.

The tone of "I Hear America Singing" is a positive
one. Whitman identifies a variety of people at work, who sing as they complete their
respective jobs: mechanics, carpenters, masons, the shoemaker, among others, as well the
the mother, or girls washing or sewing. All of these people sing as they work, content
(it would seem) with the tasks before them.

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The delicious singing of the mother, or of the
young wife at work, 
or of the girl sewing or washing, 
Each singing
what belongs to him or her and to none else, 
The day what belongs to the
day

The repetition of the
word "sing" provides a sense that Whitman is focusing on the songs these people sing:
different songs, but still uplifting and satisfying to the singer and the
audience.

The movement of one person singing and then the
next, and the next gives a sense of the movement of song, the cycle of days within a
society, of the daily tasks life demands that we complete with song. And music
is an international language. I don't think the poem is as much
about loving America as the unity of its people as they live a life there, satisfied in
their work—and all singing.

However, the tone is much
different. This poem, about the Civil War, speaks of a man leaving his tent early one
morning, unable to sleep, when he sees "three forms lying on
stretchers."

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...untended...lying,
Over each the
blanket spread, ample brownish woollen blanket,
Grey and heavy blanket,
folding, covering all.

There
is clear meaning if one reads the details carefully:

Each
form is untended: the implication is that each is beyond help.
Brown woolen [heavy, suffocating] blankets cover each figure, cover ing all—the faces
are also covered, which signifies death.

The man, curious
to know who has passed sees the face of an old man; the next is the face of a young man,
"cheeks yet blooming." The first man we understand has passed and with years behind him,
we can more easily handle his loss. The second takes us aback: a young boy has died
before beginning to live.

The third is the one that stops
the reader in his—or her—tracks.

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Then to the third--a face nor child, nor old,
very calm, as of
beautiful yellow-white ivory;
Young man, I think I
know you--I think this face of yours is the face
of the Christ
himself;
Dead and divine, and brother of all, and here again he
lies.

This line draws our
attention to the brotherhood of all men, all in the image of a benevolent Christ:
Whitman wants the reader to see that each loss is tragic: regardless of age. In death,
all are divine, all are bothers, and the sense of loss for each is the same as if Christ
were there among the other two: as if Whitman points out mankind's connection to
God—connected here in death.