"Spirit Whose Work Is Done"

"Spirit of many a solemn day and many a savage scene---electric spirit. / That with muttering voice through the war now closed, like a tireless phantom flitted."

I am trying to decide if Whitman is speaking about the spirit of war or the spirit of patriotism. I'm not sure, though it seems that the war itself is at an end. At the end of this poem Whitman says, "Let them identify you to the future in these songs." I get the distinct feeling that WW is trying to say that this "spirit" will return in the future and that we should remember what happened here, in his time. 

"Leave me your pulses of rage--bequeath them to me --fill me with currents convulsive / Let them scorch  and blister out of my chants when you are gone." Perhaps the spirit WW refers to has more to do with the soldiers returning home. How did the soldiers feel when the war was over? Was there a feeling of triumph or was it simply bittersweet. Fighting amongst ourselves had to be heartbreaking...

Whitman was said to have visited over 100,000 wounded men through the war. He sat at bedsides, he brought gifts, he wrote letters, he held hands, he kissed cheeks....He found a purpose in listening and being there for the wounded. I would think that this would have created a "spirit" and maybe that feeling is what WW alludes to in this poem. If I were lying in hospital bed, dying or not, I might be angry at my circumstances. 

Whitman wrote the Drum-Taps poems to be a separate book for the public. I believe he was trying to tell the story of the war, from beginning to end. In this poem, it seems we're near the finish. The "electric spirit" could have been the anger at so much time lost. How do you let go of the emotions of war just because someone decided the war was over? I think that was what WW was trying to do here, get folks to let go of their emotions.