This poetry from 1865 is one of several works created in response to Lincoln’s
Despite the format, this is regarded as a pastoral elegy:
The Speaker breaks off a lilac sprig; why?
(Neither for you, but for one, For you, O sane and sacred death, I would recite a melody, “Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring.”
- Even additional alliteration may be found in line 47 with “Blossoms and branches.” The speaker now has a more lyrical tone, as if the speaker’s spirits are improving.
- Line 48 continues the alliteration with the words “song,” “sane,” and “holy.” Wow, our speaker continues to impress. But given that the speaker is trying to comfort people, it becomes reasonable that we would see more poetic elements at this stage. A singsong sound is the epitome of consolation.
- (Try saying that quickly six times.) The speaker’s message of new beginnings and life’s continuation is furthered by the symbolism of a “fresh morning.” Despite the darkness, dawn is beginning to break.
- Since the speaker refers to death as “sane and sacred,” we can also start to notice his less stern attitude towards it. We definitely get the impression that the speaker is looking for the good amidst the awful because it’s not every day that death is spoken in such a positive way.
Lines 49-50
O Death, I cover you in roses and early lilies, all over bouquets of roses.
- In this situation, flowers are essentially smothering death. Yes, you got it, death.
- However, the speaker is warning us about the resiliency of life, which will always “cover over” death. The recurrent “over” indicates that life’s enduring vitality is something that death cannot escape. The return of the roses and lilies each year serves as a reminder that the cycle continues.
- Additionally, the speaker is increasingly using the apostrophe to address abstract concepts or things that aren’t actually there. Even though death doesn’t respond, we readers are spectators of this brief conversation. But the speaker’s movements here also give us a sense of power. Since we are now included in the grief of the mourners, it appears as though he is concealing death for us.
Lines 51-54
However, the lilac, which blossoms first, is what I focus on right now. I pluck numerous sprigs from the plants. I approach you with arms laden, pouring out my heart for you, for you and the coffins as a whole, O Death.
- The entire “breaking sprigs of lilacs and pouring them over death” thing seems to be something the speaker is very into. The speaker now possesses “copious” amounts (many of them) of lilacs rather than just one.
- Additionally, he is removing them from bushes left and right. He arrives pouring for everyone, including the deceased, the grieving, and us, with “laden arms.” Really kind of you, huh?
- Our speaker isn’t the only one tearing off lilacs like they’re going out of style; there’s more going on here. We perceive the speaker’s outpouring of empathy on a more symbolic level. He isn’t just reciting meaningless words of comfort. He is disseminating the one sign he has for enduring through life. Additionally, he is acting quite sincerely throughout. In other words, these aren’t merely meaningless deeds.
- The illustration of his “laden arms” and the act of “pouring” lilacs in line 53 let us sense his sincerity the most. Perhaps we can even picture a youthful, enthusiastic lover doing something similar with roses for the one he truly loves. There aren’t enough lilacs or roses nearby to demonstrate the speaker’s empathy, yet neither are there enough roses to demonstrate his affection. He has such deep feelings for the grieving and, of course, for his own sorrow.
- The speaker’s empathy and consolation are furthered by the use of “you” repeatedly. He seems to be communicating both to the grieving and to us readers. We are all one in this space of grieving, therefore there is no need to identify a specific audience.
What author wrote the elegy When lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom D?
One of Walt Whitman’s most famous poems is titled “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” Whitman was an American poet (1819-92). Whitman delivers an elegy for Abraham Lincoln, who had been killed not long before Whitman penned the poem, over the course of 206 lines of inventive free poetry. Before reading our analysis below, you can read ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’ here.
Whitman’s poem, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” takes its title from the moment he learnt of Lincoln’s passing in April 1865. Whitman saw the lilacs were in bloom when he went outside his mother’s New York apartment while he was there to see his mother and brother. This seems to have been the inspiration for Whitman’s elegy for Lincoln, albeit the poem wasn’t finished until a few months later (more of which below).
Over time, the poem’s organization evolved a little. Whitman was notorious for modifying his work after its initial publication, but the version we presently read (in most copies) is the 1881 one. The final version is divided into 16 sections, while initially it had 21.
Let’s examine “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’dlanguage “‘s and imagery in more detail. Since the poem has over 200 lines, we won’t analyze every single one; instead, we’ll focus on some of the important passages:
Whitman declares in the beginning of the poem that he mourns for the President, who is only referred to as “him,” and that he will continue to mourn for him. Whitman compares Lincoln to a star that has fallen or dropped “early” from the western sky (with “western” here referring to both the sky where the sun sets and the western world of which America is a part) since Lincoln died before his time.
Lincoln is still referred to by Whitman as a fallen star. (An apostrophe is a rhetorical device used to refer to a deceased or absent person; in this case, it is Abraham Lincoln.) Whitman describes “shades of darkness” (also known as “shadows of night”), “black fog,” and a “harsh encircling cloud” that binds and stifles the poet’s soul in order to express his anguish at Lincoln’s murder. His sorrow also feels like someone is squeezing him and rendering him helpless.
A common image in pastoral poetry is the hermit thrush. Whitman informs us that it is spring and that songbirds are singing, yet the idea of a “solitary” and “secluded” bird singing at such a sad moment for the poet has a whiff of pathetic fallacy.
Whitman salutes the coffin as it carries Lincoln’s remains to rest in Section 6 of the poem, as the entire country is in mourning. This was true of the grief-filled public uproar that followed Lincoln’s murder. (And “crape-veil’d women” anticipates Auden’s well-known lines from his famous elegy about wrapping crepe veils over the necks of the “public doves”).
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d is, in some ways, unlike your typical elegy, as the poem progresses further. The fact that Abraham Lincoln is never specifically mentioned in “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” despite the fact that it is an elegy for him, is one of its most noteworthy features. Lincoln is not explicitly named in the poem, but rather by implication. However, this should not come as a surprise to us since Milton’s well-known elegy “Lycidas,” written in honor of the youthful poet Edward King, refers to King only by the pastoral name of “Lycidas” rather than by name.
Whitman was a pioneer of free verse, therefore his poem may appear to be unorthodox in structure, but from one angle, it can be viewed as a typical pastoral elegy. The poem appears to want to transcend the confines of such classification, much like Whitman’s free poetry wants to escape the constrictions of conventional meter, despite the fact that Whitman incorporates some of the trappings of traditional elegy.
It is simultaneously an elegy honoring Abraham Lincoln and a poem about sorrow on a much larger scale, or perhaps the inability to mourn because of how overwhelming things have become. Lincoln was assassinated near the close of the American Civil War, a fight that left many families grieving the loss of loved ones.
Because of this, several poets and critics have tried to categorize “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” differently than the name “elegy for Lincoln” may imply. For instance, Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) referred to the poem as a “nocturne,” or a poem for the night. And while Whitman wrote the poem with the assassination of Lincoln very much in mind, he didn’t really begin composing it until a few months after Lincoln’s passing (although he started keeping notes as soon as the day after).