Oh, wise physician of a wasted land!

The line reads like an apostrophe—an address to a figure imagined as a healer (“physician”) confronting collective ruin (“a wasted land”). In Hagedorn’s idiom, the “physician” can be taken less as a literal doctor than as a moral or political restorer: someone called upon to diagnose a society’s sickness and prescribe renewal. The phrase “wasted land” evokes devastation—whether from war, social breakdown, or spiritual desiccation—so the speaker’s exclamation carries both desperation and reverence. The wisdom attributed to the physician suggests that mere technical skill is insufficient; what is needed is judgment, compassion, and a capacity to rebuild civic or inner life from damage.