"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" is a

long poem The long poem is a literary genre including all poetry of considerable length. Though the definition of a long poem is vague and broad and unnecessary, the genre includes some of the most important poetry ever written. With more than 220,000 (1 ...

written by American poet

Walt Whitman Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among ...

(1819–1892) as an

elegy An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometime ...

President Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation throu ...

. It was written in the summer of 1865 during a period of profound national mourning in the aftermath of the president's assassination on 14 April of that year. The poem, written in

free verse Free verse is an open form of poetry, which in its modern form arose through the French '' vers libre'' form. It does not use consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any musical pattern. It thus tends to follow the rhythm of natural speech. Defi ...

in 206 lines, uses many of the literary techniques associated with the

pastoral elegy The pastoral elegy is a poem about both death and idyllic rural life. Often, the pastoral elegy features shepherds. The genre is actually a subgroup of pastoral poetry, as the elegy takes the pastoral elements and relates them to expressing grief ...

. Despite being an expression to the fallen president, Whitman neither mentions Lincoln by name nor discusses the circumstances of his death in the poem. Instead, he uses a series of rural and natural imagery including the symbols of the

lilac ''Syringa'' is a genus of 12 currently recognized species of flowering woody plants in the olive family or Oleaceae called lilacs. These lilacs are native to woodland and scrub from southeastern Europe to eastern Asia, and widely and commonl ...

s, a drooping star in the western sky (

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never f ...

), and the

hermit thrush The hermit thrush (''Catharus guttatus'') is a medium-sized North American thrush. It is not very closely related to the other North American migrant species of ''Catharus'', but rather to the Mexican russet nightingale-thrush. The specific na ...

, and he employs the traditional progression of the pastoral elegy in moving from grief toward an acceptance and knowledge of death. The poem also addresses the pity of war through imagery vaguely referencing the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and t ...

(1861–1865), which effectively ended only days before the assassination. Written ten years after publishing the first edition of ''

Leaves of Grass ''Leaves of Grass'' is a poetry collection by American poet Walt Whitman. Though it was first published in 1855, Whitman spent most of his professional life writing and rewriting ''Leaves of Grass'', revising it multiple times until his death. T ...

'' (1855), "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" reflects a maturing of Whitman's poetic vision from a drama of identity and romantic exuberance that has been tempered by his emotional experience of the American Civil War. Whitman included the poem as part of a quickly written sequel to a collection of poems addressing the war that was being printed at the time of Lincoln's death. These poems, collected under the titles ''

Drum-Taps ''Drum-Taps'', first published in 1865, is a collection of poetry written by American poet Walt Whitman during the American Civil War. 18 additional poems were added later in the year to create '' Sequel to Drum-Taps''. History Creating the ...

'' and ''

Sequel to Drum-Taps ''Sequel to Drum-Taps'': ''When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd and other poems'' is a collection of eighteen poems written and published by American poet Walt Whitman in 1865. Most of the poems in the collection reflect on the American Civ ...

'', range in emotional context from "excitement to woe, from distant observation to engagement, from belief to resignation" and "more concerned with history than the self, more aware of the precariousness of America's present and future than of its expansive promise." First published in autumn 1865, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"—along with 42 other poems from ''Drum-Taps'' and ''Sequel to Drum-Taps''—was absorbed into ''Leaves of Grass'' beginning with the fourth edition, published in 1867. The poem is one of several that Whitman wrote on Lincoln's death. Although Whitman did not consider the poem to be among his best, it has been compared in both effect and quality to several acclaimed works of English literature, including elegies such as

John Milton John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem ''Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and politica ...

s ''

Lycidas "Lycidas" () is a poem by John Milton, written in 1637 as a pastoral elegy. It first appeared in a 1638 collection of elegies, ''Justa Edouardo King Naufrago'', dedicated to the memory of Edward King, a friend of Milton at Cambridge who dro ...

'' (1637) and

Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley ( ; 4 August 17928 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achi ...

's ''

Adonais ''Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, Author of Endymion, Hyperion, etc.'' () is a pastoral elegy written by Percy Bysshe Shelley for John Keats in 1821, and widely regarded as one of Shelley's best and best-known works. In the late 1850s and early 1860s, Whitman established his reputation as a poet with the release of ''

''. Whitman intended to write a distinctly American epic and developed a

style inspired by the

cadences In Western musical theory, a cadence (Latin ''cadentia'', "a falling") is the end of a phrase in which the melody or harmony creates a sense of full or partial resolution, especially in music of the 16th century onwards.Don Michael Randel (19 ...

of the

King James Bible The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of ...

. The small volume, first released in 1855, was considered controversial by some, with critics attacking Whitman's verse as "obscene." However, it attracted praise from American Transcendentalist essayist, lecturer, and poet

Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a cham ...

, which contributed to fostering significant interest in Whitman's work. At the start of the

, Whitman moved from New York to Washington, D.C., where he obtained work in a series of government offices, first with the Army Paymaster's Office and later with the

Bureau of Indian Affairs The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), also known as Indian Affairs (IA), is a United States federal agency within the Department of the Interior. It is responsible for implementing federal laws and policies related to American Indians and A ...

. He volunteered in army hospitals as a "hospital missionary." His wartime experiences informed his poetry, which matured into reflections on death and youth, the brutality of war, and patriotism, and offered stark images and vignettes of the war. Whitman's brother, George Washington Whitman, had been taken prisoner in Virginia on 30 September 1864, and was held for five months in

Libby Prison Libby Prison was a Confederate prison at Richmond, Virginia, during the American Civil War. In 1862 it was designated to hold officer prisoners from the Union Army. It gained an infamous reputation for the overcrowded and harsh conditions. Priso ...

, a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp near

Richmond, Virginia (Thus do we reach the stars) , image_map = , mapsize = 250 px , map_caption = Location within Virginia , pushpin_map = Virginia#USA , pushpin_label = Richmond , pushpin_m ...

. On 24 February 1865, George was granted a

furlough A furlough (; from nl, verlof, " leave of absence") is a temporary leave of employees due to special needs of a company or employer, which may be due to economic conditions of a specific employer or in society as a whole. These furloughs may be ...

to return home because of his poor health, and Walt Whitman travelled to his mother's home in New York to visit his brother. While visiting Brooklyn, Whitman contracted to have his collection of Civil War poems, ''Drum-Taps'', published. The Civil War had ended, and a few days later, on 14 April 1865, President

Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation throu ...

was shot by

John Wilkes Booth John Wilkes Booth (May 10, 1838 – April 26, 1865) was an American stage actor who assassinated United States President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. A member of the prominent 19th-century Booth ...

while attending the performance of a play at

Ford's Theatre Ford's Theatre is a theater located in Washington, D.C., which opened in August 1863. The theater is infamous for being the site of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. On the night of April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth entered the theater bo ...

. Lincoln died the following morning. Whitman was at his mother's home when he heard the news of the president's death; in his grief he stepped outside the door to the yard, where the lilacs were blooming. Many years later, Whitman recalled the weather and conditions on the day that Lincoln died in ''Specimen Days'', where he wrote: Lincoln was the first American president to be assassinated, and his death had a long-lasting emotional impact in the United States. During the three weeks after his death, millions of Americans participated in a nationwide public pageant of grief, including a

state funeral A state funeral is a public funeral ceremony, observing the strict rules of protocol, held to honour people of national significance. State funerals usually include much pomp and ceremony as well as religious overtones and distinctive elements of ...

, and the 1,700-mile (2,700 km) westward journey of the

funeral train A funeral train carries a coffin or coffins (caskets) to a place of interment by railway. Funeral trains today are often reserved for leaders, national heroes, or government officials, as part of a state funeral, but in the past were sometimes ...

from Washington, through New York, to

Springfield, Illinois Springfield is the capital of the U.S. state of Illinois and the county seat and largest city of Sangamon County. The city's population was 114,394 at the 2020 census, which makes it the state's seventh most-populous city, the second largest ...

. Lincoln's public funeral in Washington was held on 19 April 1865. Whitman biographer Jerome Loving believes that Whitman did not attend the public ceremonies for Lincoln in Washington, as he did not leave Brooklyn for the nation's capital until 21 April. Likewise, Whitman could not have attended ceremonies held in New York after the arrival of the funeral train, as they were observed on 24 April. Loving thus suggests that Whitman's descriptions of the funeral procession, public events, and the long train journey may have been "based on second-hand information." He does concede that Whitman in his journey from New York to Washington may have passed the Lincoln funeral train on its way to New York—possibly in

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Harrisburg is the capital city of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Dauphin County. With a population of 50,135 as of the 2021 census, Harrisburg is the 9th largest city and 15th largest municipality in ...

. Whitman may have recalled the imagery of lilacs from his earliest home, now the Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site, which still boasts lilacs blooming in the farmhouse dooryard.

Publication history

On 1 April 1865, Whitman had signed a contract with Brooklyn printer Peter Eckler to publish ''Drum-Taps'', a 72-page collection of 43 poems in which Whitman addressed the emotional experiences of the Civil War. ''Drum-Taps'' was being printed at the time of Lincoln's assassination two weeks later. Upon learning of the president's death, Whitman delayed the printing to insert a quickly-written poem, " Hush'd Be the Camps To-Day", into the collection. The poem's subtitle indicates it was written on 19 April 1865—four days after Lincoln's death. Whitman was unsatisfied with the poem and resolved to write a fitting poem mourning Lincoln's death. Upon returning to Washington, Whitman contracted with Gibson Brothers to publish a pamphlet of eighteen poems that included two works directly addressing the assassination—"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" and " O Captain! My Captain!". He intended to include the pamphlet with copies of ''Drum-Taps''. The 24-page collection was titled ''Sequel to Drum-Taps'' and bore the subtitle ''When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd and other poems''. The eponymous poem filled the first nine pages. In October, after the pamphlet was printed, he returned to Brooklyn to have them integrated with ''Drum-Taps''. Whitman added the poems from ''Drum-Taps'' and ''Sequel to Drum-Taps'' as a supplement to the fourth edition of ''Leaves of Grass'' printed in 1867 by William E. Chapin. Whitman revised his collection ''Leaves of Grass'' throughout his life, and each additional edition included newer works, his previously published poems often with revisions or minor emendations, and reordering of the sequence of the poems. The first edition (1855) was a small pamphlet of twelve poems. At his death four decades later, the collection included around 400 poems. For the fourth edition (1867)—in which "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" had first been included—''Leaves of Grass'' had been expanded to a collection of 236 poems.

University of Nebraska A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United State ...

literature professor Kenneth Price and

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized into 12 co ...

English professor Ed Folsom describe the 1867 edition as "the most carelessly printed and most chaotic of all the editions" citing

errata An erratum or corrigendum (plurals: errata, corrigenda) (comes from la, errata corrige) is a correction of a published text. As a general rule, publishers issue an erratum for a production error (i.e., an error introduced during the publishing pro ...

and conflicts with typesetters. Price and Folsom note that book had five different formats—some including the ''Drum-Taps'' poems; some without. "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" and his other three Lincoln Poems "O Captain! My Captain", "Hush'd be the Camps To-day", " This Dust Was Once the Man" (1871) were included in subsequent editions of ''Leaves of Grass'', although in Whitman's 1871 and 1881 editions it was separated from ''Drum-Taps''. In the 1871 edition, Whitman's four Lincoln poems were listed as a cluster titled "President Lincoln's Burial Hymn". In the 1881 edition, this cluster was renamed "Memories of President Lincoln". The collection was not substantially revised after this edition—although later editions saw new poems added. ''Leaves of Grass'' has never been out of print since its first publication in 1855, and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" is among several poems from the collection that appear frequently in poetry anthologies.

Analysis and interpretation

Lincoln assassination slide c1900 - Restoration

Structure

"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" is a first-person

monologue In theatre, a monologue (from el, μονόλογος, from μόνος ''mónos'', "alone, solitary" and λόγος ''lógos'', "speech") is a speech presented by a single character, most often to express their thoughts aloud, though sometimes a ...

written in free verse. It is a

, 206 lines in length (207 according to some sources), that is cited as a prominent example of the elegy form and of

narrative poetry Narrative poetry is a form of poetry that tells a story, often using the voices of both a narrator and characters; the entire story is usually written in metered verse. Narrative poems do not need rhyme. The poems that make up this genre may be ...

. In its final form, published in 1881 and republished to the present, the poem is divided into sixteen sections referred to as

canto The canto () is a principal form of division in medieval and modern long poetry. Etymology and equivalent terms The word ''canto'' is derived from the Italian word for "song" or "singing", which comes from the Latin ''cantus'', "song", from the ...

s or

strophe A strophe () is a poetic term originally referring to the first part of the ode in Ancient Greek tragedy, followed by the antistrophe and epode. The term has been extended to also mean a structural division of a poem containing stanzas of varyi ...

s that range in length from 5 or 6 lines to as many as 53 lines. The poem does not possess a consistent metrical pattern, and the length of each line varies from seven syllables to as many as twenty syllables. Literary scholar Kathy Rugoff says that "the poem...has a broad scope and incorporates a strongly characterized speaker, a complex narrative action and an array of highly lyrical images." The first version of "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" that appeared in 1865 was arranged into 21 strophes. It was included with this structure in the fourth edition of ''Leaves of Grass'' that was published in 1867. By 1871, Whitman had combined the strophes numbered 19 and 20 into one, and the poem had 20 in total. However, for the seventh edition (1881) of ''Leaves of Grass'', the poem's final seven strophes of his original text were combined into the final three strophes of the 16-strophe poem that is familiar to readers today. For the 1881 edition, the original strophes numbered 14, 15, and 16 were combined into the revised 14th strophe; strophes numbered 17 and 18 were combined into the revised 15th strophe. The material from the former strophes numbered 19, 20 and 21 in 1865 were combined for the revised 16th and final strophe in 1881. According to literary critic and

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

professor

Helen Vendler Helen Hennessy Vendler (born April 30, 1933) is an American literary critic and is Porter University Professor Emerita at Harvard University. Life and career Helen Hennessy Vendler was born on April 30, 1933, in Boston, Massachusetts, to George ...

, the poem "builds up to its longest and most lyrical moment in canto 14, achieves its moral climax in canto 15, and ends with a coda of 'retrievements out of the night' in canto 16."

Narrative

While Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" is an elegy to the fallen president, it does not mention him by name or the circumstances surrounding his death. This is not atypical; Whitman biographer Jerome Loving states that "traditionally elegies do not mention the name of the deceased in order to allow the lament to have universal application". According to Rugoff, the poem's narrative is given by an unnamed speaker, adding: According to Vendler, the speaker's first act is to break off a sprig from the lilac bush (line 17) that he subsequently lays on Lincoln's coffin during the funeral procession (line 44–45):

Style and techniques

Whitman's biographers explain that Whitman's verse is influenced by the aesthetics, musicality and

of phrasing and passages in the

. Whitman employs several techniques of parallelism—a device common to

Biblical poetry The ancient Hebrews identified poetical portions in their sacred texts, as shown by their entitling as "songs" or as "chants" passages such as Exodus 15:1-19 and Numbers 21:17-20; a song or chant () is, according to the primary meaning of the ter ...

. While Whitman does not use

end rhyme A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually, the exact same phonemes) in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of perfect rhyming is consciously used for a musical or aesthetic ...

, he employs internal rhyme in passages throughout the poem. Although Whitman's free verse does not use a consistent pattern of meter or rhyme, the disciplined use of other poetic techniques and patterns create a sense of structure. His poetry achieves a sense of cohesive structure and beauty through the internal patterns of sound, diction, specific word choice, and effect of association. The poem uses many of the

literary technique A narrative technique (known for literary fictional narratives as a literary technique, literary device, or fictional device) is any of several specific methods the creator of a narrative uses to convey what they want —in other words, a str ...

s associated with the

, a meditative lyric genre derived from the poetic tradition of

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

and

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...

antiquity Antiquity or Antiquities may refer to: Historical objects or periods Artifacts *Antiquities, objects or artifacts surviving from ancient cultures Eras Any period before the European Middle Ages (5th to 15th centuries) but still within the histo ...

. Literary scholar

Harold Bloom Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking worl ...

writes that "Elegies often have been used for political purposes, as a means of healing the nation." A pastoral elegy uses rural imagery to address the poet's grief—a "poetic response to death" that seeks "to transmute the fact of death into an imaginatively acceptable form, to reaffirm what death has called into question—the integrity of the pastoral image of contentment." An elegy seeks, also, to "attempt to preserve the meaning of an individual's life as something of positive value when that life itself has ceased." A typical pastoral elegy contains several features, including "a procession of mourners, the decoration of a hearse or grave, a list of flowers, the changing of the seasons, and the association of the dead person with a star or other permanent natural object." This includes a discussion of the death, expressions of mourning, grief, anger, and consolation, and the poet's simultaneous acceptance of death's inevitability and hope for immortality. According to literary scholar James Perrin Warren, Whitman's long, musical lines rely on three important techniques—syntactic parallelism, repetition, and cataloguing. Repetition is a device used by an orator or poet to lend persuasive emphasis to the sentiment, and "create a driving rhythm by the recurrence of the same sound, it can also intensify the emotion of the poem". It is described as a form of parallelism that resembles a

litany Litany, in Christian worship and some forms of Judaic worship, is a form of prayer used in services and processions, and consisting of a number of petitions. The word comes through Latin '' litania'' from Ancient Greek λιτανεία (''lit ...

. To achieve these techniques, Whitman employs many literary and rhetorical devices common to classical poetry and to the pastoral elegy to frame his emotional response. According to Warren, Whitman "uses ''anaphora'', the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of lines; ''epistrophe'', the repetition of the same words or phrase at the end of lines, and ''symploce'' (the combined use of ''anaphora'' and ''epistrophe''), the repetition of both initial and terminal words. According to Raja Sharma, Whitman's use of ''anaphora'' forces the reader "to inhale several bits of text without pausing for breath, and this breathlessness contributes to the incantatory quality". This sense of incantation in the poem and for the framework for the expansive lyricism that scholars have called "cataloguing". Whitman's poetry features many examples of cataloguing where he both employs parallelism and repetition to build rhythm. Scholar Betty Erkkila calls Whitman's cataloguing the "overarching figure of ''Leaves of Grass'', and wrote: According to Daniel Hoffman, Whitman "is a poet whose hallmark is ''anaphora''". Hoffman describes the use of the anaphoric verse as "a poetry of beginnings" and that Whitman's use of its repetition and similarity at the inception of each line is "so necessary as the norm against which all variations and departures are measured...what follows is varied, the parallels and the ensuing words, phrases, and clauses lending the verse its delicacy, its charm, its power". Further, the device allows Whitman "to vary the tempo or feeling, to build up climaxes or drop off in innuendoes" Scholar Stanley Coffman analyzed Whitman's catalogue technique through the application of

s comment that such lists are suggestive of the metamorphosis of "an imaginative and excited mind". According to Coffman, Emerson adds that because "the universe is the externalization of the soul, and its objects symbols, manifestations of the one reality behind them, Words which name objects also carry with them the whole sense of nature and are themselves to be understood as symbols. Thus a list of words (objects) will be effective in giving to the mind, under certain conditions, a heightened sense not only of reality but of the variety and abundance of its manifestations."

Themes and symbolism

A trinity of symbols: "Lilac and star and bird twined"

Whitman's poem features three prominent motifs or images, referred to as a "trinity" of symbols, which biographer

David S. Reynolds David S. Reynolds (born 1948) is an American literary critic, biographer, and historian who has written about American literature and culture. He is the author or editor of fifteen books, on the Civil War era—including figures such as Walt W ...

describes as autobiographical: # the

lilacs The Literatura Latino-Americana e do Caribe em Ciências da Saúde (in Portuguese), acronym LILACS, and previously called Latin American Index Medicus,Piegas MH, Nowinski A. Index Medicus Latino-Americano: exemplo de cooperação técnica entre pa ...

represent the poet's perennial love for Lincoln; # the fallen star (

) is Lincoln; and # the

represents death, or its chant.

"Lilac blooming perennial"

According to Price and Folsom, Whitman's encounter with the lilacs in bloom in his mother's yard caused the flowers to become "viscerally bound to the memory of Lincoln's death." According to Gregory Eiselein:

"Great star early droop'd in the western sky"

In the weeks before Lincoln's assassination, Whitman observed the planet Venus shining brightly in the evening sky. He later wrote of the observation, "Nor earth nor sky ever knew spectacles of superber beauty than some of the nights lately here. The western star, Venus, in the earlier hours of evening, has never been so large, so clear; it seems as if it told something, as if it held rapport indulgent with humanity, with us Americans" In the poem, Whitman describes the disappearance of the star: Literary scholar Patricia Lee Yongue identifies Lincoln as the falling star. Further, she contrasts the dialectic of the "powerful western falling star" with a "nascent spring" and describes it as a metaphor for Lincoln's death meant to "evoke powerful, conflicting emotions in the poet which transport him back to that first and continuously remembered rebellion signaling the death of his own innocence." Biographer Betsy Erkkila writes that Whitman's star is "the fallen star of America itself", and characterizes Whitman's association as "politicopoetic myth to counter Booth's cry on the night of the assassination—'' Sic Semper Tyrannis''—and the increasingly popular image of Lincoln as a dictatorial leader bent on abrogating rather than preserving basic American liberties." The star, seemingly immortal, is associated with Lincoln's vision for America—a vision of reconciliation and a national unity or identity that could only survive the president's death if Americans resolved to continue pursuing it. However, Vendler says that the poem dismisses the idea of a personal immortality through the symbol of the star, saying: "the star sinks, and it is gone forever."

"A shy and hidden bird"

In the summer of 1865, Whitman's friend,

John Burroughs John Burroughs (April 3, 1837 – March 29, 1921) was an American naturalist and nature essayist, active in the conservation movement in the United States. The first of his essay collections was ''Wake-Robin'' in 1871. In the words of his bi ...

(1837–1921), an aspiring nature writer, had returned to Washington to his position at the Treasury department after a long vacation in the woods. Burroughs recalled that Whitman had been "deeply interested in what I tell him of the hermit thrush, and he says he largely used the information I have given him in one of his principal poems". Burroughs described the song as "the finest sound in nature...perhaps more of an evening than a morning hymn...a voice of that calm, sweet solemnity one attains to in his best moments." Whitman took copious notes of his conversations with Burroughs on the subject, writing of the hermit thrush that it "sings oftener after sundown...is very secluded...likes shaded, dark places...His song is a hymn...in swamps—is very shy...never sings near the farm houses—never in the settlement—is the bird of the solemn primal woods & of Nature pure & holy." Burroughs published an essay in May 1865 in which he described the hermit thrush as "quite a rare bird, of very shy and secluded habits" found "only in the deepest and most remote forests, usually in damp and swampy localities". Loving notes that the hermit thrush was "a common bird on Whitman's native Long Island". Biographer Justin Kaplan draws a connection between Whitman's notes and the lines in the poem: According to Reynolds, Whitman's first-person narrator describes himself as "me powerless-O helpless soul of me" and identifies with the hermit thrush a "'shy and hidden bird' singing of death with a "bleeding throat'". The hermit thrush is seen as an intentional

alter ego An alter ego (Latin for "other I", "doppelgänger") means an alternate self, which is believed to be distinct from a person's normal or true original personality. Finding one's alter ego will require finding one's other self, one with a different ...

for Whitman, and its song as the "source of the poet's insight." Miller writes that "The hermit thrush is an American bird, and Whitman made it his own in his Lincoln elegy. We might even take the 'dry grass singing' as an oblique allusion to ''Leaves of Grass.''" Scholar James Edwin Miller states that "Whitman's hermit thrush becomes the source of his reconciliation to Lincoln's death, to all death, as the "strong deliveress" Killingsworth writes that "the poet retreats to the swamp to mourn the death of the beloved president to the strains of the solitary hermit thrush singing in the dark pines...the sacred places resonate with the mood of the poet, they offer renewal and revived inspiration, they return him to the rhythms of the earth with tides" and replaces the sense of time.

Legacy

Influence on Eliot's ''The Waste Land''

Scholars believe that T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) drew from Whitman's elegy in fashioning his poem ''The Waste Land'' (1922). In the poem, Eliot prominently mentions lilacs and April in its opening lines, and later passages about "dry grass singing" and "where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees." Eliot told author

Ford Madox Ford Ford Madox Ford (né Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer ( ); 17 December 1873 – 26 June 1939) was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals '' The English Review'' and ''The Transatlantic Review'' were instrumental in ...

that Whitman and his own lines adorned by lilacs and the hermit thrush were the poems' only "good lines". Cleo McNelly Kearns writes that "Whitman's poem gives us not only motifs and images of ''The Waste Land''...but its very tone and pace, the steady andante which makes of both poems a walking meditation." While Eliot acknowledged that the passage in ''The Waste Land'' beginning "Who is the third who walks always beside you" was a reference to an early Antarctic expedition of explorer

Ernest Shackleton Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (15 February 1874 – 5 January 1922) was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age o ...

, scholars have seen connections to the appearance of Jesus to two of his disciples walking on the Road to Emmaus ( Luke 24:13–35). However, Alan Shucard indicates a possible link to Whitman, and a passage in the fourteenth strophe "with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me, / And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me, / And I in the middle with companions" (lines 121–123). Beginning in the 1950s, scholars and critics starting with John Peter began to question whether Eliot's poem were an elegy to "a male friend." English poet and Eliot biographer

Stephen Spender Sir Stephen Harold Spender (28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995) was an English poet, novelist and essayist whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by th ...

, whom Eliot published for Faber & Faber in the 1920s, speculated it was an elegy, perhaps to Jean Jules Verdenal (1890–1915), a French medical student with literary inclinations who died in 1915 during the Gallipoli Campaign, according to Miller. Eliot spent considerable amounts of time with Verdenal in exploring Paris and the surrounding area in 1910 and 1911, and the two corresponded for several years after their parting. According to Miller, Eliot remembered Verdenal as "coming across the Luxembourg Garden in the late afternoon, waving a branch of lilacs," during a journey in April 1911 the two took to a garden on the outskirts of Paris. Both Eliot and Verdenal repeated the journey alone later in their lives during periods of melancholy—Verdenal in April 1912, Eliot in December 1920. Miller observes that if "we follow out all the implications of Eliot's evocation of Whitman's "Lilacs" at this critical moment in ''The Waste Land'' we might assume it has its origins, too, in a death, in a death deeply felt, the death of a beloved friend"..."But unlike the Whitman poem, Eliot's ''Waste Land'' has no retreat on the 'shores of the water,' no hermit thrush to sing its joyful carol of death." He further adds that "It seems unlikely that Eliot's long poem, in the form in which it was first conceived and written, would have been possible without the precedence of Whitman's own experiments in similar forms."

Musical settings

Whitman's poetry has been set by a variety of composers in Europe and the United States although critics have ranged from calling his writings "unmusical" to noting that his expansive, lyrical style and repetition mimics "the process of musical composition". Jack Sullivan writes that Whitman "had an early, intuitive appreciation of vocal music, one that, as he himself acknowledged, helped shape ''Leaves of Grass''" Sullivan claims that one of the first compositions setting Whitman's poem,

Charles Villiers Stanford Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (30 September 1852 – 29 March 1924) was an Anglo-Irish composer, music teacher, and conductor of the late Romantic era. Born to a well-off and highly musical family in Dublin, Stanford was educated at the ...

s '' Elegiac Ode'', Op. 21 (1884), a four-movement work scored for baritone and soprano soloists, chorus and orchestra, likely had reached a wider audience during Whitman's lifetime than his poems.

Holst

After

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

Gustav Holst Gustav Theodore Holst (born Gustavus Theodore von Holst; 21 September 1874 – 25 May 1934) was an English composer, arranger and teacher. Best known for his orchestral suite ''The Planets'', he composed many other works across a range ...

turned to the last section of Whitman's elegy to mourn friends killed in the war in composing his '' Ode to Death'' (1919) for chorus and orchestra. Holst saw Whitman "as a New World prophet of tolerance and internationalism as well as a new breed of mystic whose transcendentalism offered an antidote to encrusted Victorianism." According to Sullivan, "Holst invests Whitman's vision of "lovely and soothing death" with luminous open chords that suggest a sense of infinite space.... Holst is interested here in indeterminacy, a feeling of the infinite, not in predictability and closure."

Hartmann

In 1936, German composer

Karl Amadeus Hartmann Karl Amadeus Hartmann (2 August 1905 – 5 December 1963) was a German composer. Sometimes described as the greatest German symphonist of the 20th century, he is now largely overlooked, particularly in English-speaking countries. Life Born in ...

(1905–1963) began setting a German translation of an excerpt from Whitman's poem for an intended

cantata A cantata (; ; literally "sung", past participle feminine singular of the Italian verb ''cantare'', "to sing") is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir. The meaning o ...

scored for an

alto The musical term alto, meaning "high" in Italian ( Latin: ''altus''), historically refers to the contrapuntal part higher than the tenor and its associated vocal range. In 4-part voice leading alto is the second-highest part, sung in choruse ...

soloist and orchestra that was given various titles including ''Lamento'', ''Kantate'' (trans. 'Cantata'), ''Symphonisches Fragment'' ('Symphonic Fragment'), and ''Unser Leben'' ('Our Life'). The cantata contained passages from Whitman's elegy, and from three other poems. Hartmann stated in correspondence that he freely adapted the poem, which he thought embraced his "generally difficult, hopeless life, although no idea will be choked with death" Hartmann later incorporated his setting of the poem as the second movement titled ''Frühling'' ('Spring') of a work that he designated as his First Symphony ''Versuch eines Requiem'' ('Attempt at a Requiem'). Hartmann withdrew his compositions from musical performance in Germany during the Nazi era and the work was not performed until May 1948, when it was premiered in

Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , " Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on it ...

. His first symphony is seen as a protest of the Nazi regime. Hartmann's setting is compared to the intentions of

Igor Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century clas ...

s ballet ''

The Rite of Spring , image = Roerich Rite of Spring.jpg , image_size = 350px , caption = Concept design for act 1, part of Nicholas Roerich's designs for Diaghilev's 1913 production of ' , composer = Igor Stravinsky , based_on ...

'' where it was not "a representation of the natural phenomenon of the season, but an expression of ritualistic violence cast in sharp relief against the fleeting tenderness and beauty of the season."

Hindemith

American conductor Robert Shaw and his choral ensemble, the Robert Shaw Chorale, commissioned German composer

Paul Hindemith Paul Hindemith (; 16 November 189528 December 1963) was a German composer, music theorist, teacher, violist and conductor. He founded the Amar Quartet in 1921, touring extensively in Europe. As a composer, he became a major advocate of the ' ...

to set Whitman's text to music to mourn the death of President

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...

on 12 April 1945. Hindemith had lived in the United States during World War II. The work was titled '' When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd: A Requiem for those we love''. Hindemith set the poem in 11 sections, scored for

mezzo-soprano A mezzo-soprano or mezzo (; ; meaning "half soprano") is a type of classical female singing voice whose vocal range lies between the soprano and the contralto voice types. The mezzo-soprano's vocal range usually extends from the A below middl ...

and

baritone A baritone is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the bass and the tenor voice-types. The term originates from the Greek (), meaning "heavy sounding". Composers typically write music for this voice in the ...

soloists,

mixed choir A choir ( ; also known as a chorale or chorus) is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which sp ...

(SATB), and full orchestra. It premiered on 20 April 1946, conducted by Shaw. The composition is regarded by musicologist David Neumeyer as Hindemith's "only profoundly American work." and Paul Hume described it as "a work of genius and the presence of the genius presiding over its performance brought us splendor and profound and moving glory." It is noted that Hindemith incorporated a Jewish melody, ''Gaza'', in his composition.

Weill, Hughes, and Rice

Whitman's poem appears in the Broadway musical '' Street Scene'' (1946) which was the collaboration of composer

Kurt Weill Kurt Julian Weill (March 2, 1900April 3, 1950) was a German-born American composer active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fru ...

, poet and lyricist

Langston Hughes James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. One of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz poetry, H ...

, and playwright Elmer Rice. Rice adapted his 1929 Pulitzer prize-winning play of the same name for the musical. In the play, which premiered in New York City in January 1947, the poem's third stanza is recited, followed by a

duet A duet is a musical composition for two performers in which the performers have equal importance to the piece, often a composition involving two singers or two pianists. It differs from a harmony, as the performers take turns performing a sol ...

, "Don't Forget The Lilac Bush", inspired by Whitman's verse. Weill received the first

Tony Award The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Broadway Theatre, more commonly known as the Tony Award, recognizes excellence in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual c ...

for Best Original Score for this work

1990s onward

African-American composer George T. Walker, Jr. (1922–2018) set Whitman's poem in his composition '' Lilacs for voice and orchestra'' which was awarded the 1996

Pulitzer Prize for Music The Pulitzer Prize for Music is one of seven Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually in Letters, Drama, and Music. It was first given in 1943. Joseph Pulitzer arranged for a music scholarship to be awarded each year, and this was eventually converted ...

. The work, described as "passionate, and very American," with "a beautiful and evocative lyrical quality" using Whitman's words, was premiered by the

Boston Symphony Orchestra The Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) is an American orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the second-oldest of the five major American symphony orchestras commonly referred to as the " Big Five". Founded by Henry Lee Higginson in 18 ...

on 1 February 1996. Composer

George Crumb George Henry Crumb Jr. (24 October 1929 – 6 February 2022) was an American composer of avant-garde contemporary classical music. Early in his life he rejected the widespread modernist usage of serialism, developing a highly personal musical ...

(born 1929) set the Death Carol in his 1979 work ''Apparition'' (1979), an eight-part

song cycle A song cycle (german: Liederkreis or Liederzyklus) is a group, or cycle, of individually complete songs designed to be performed in a sequence as a unit.Susan Youens, ''Grove online'' The songs are either for solo voice or an ensemble, or rare ...

for soprano and amplified piano. The

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...

commissioned American neoclassical composer

Roger Sessions Roger Huntington Sessions (December 28, 1896March 16, 1985) was an American composer, teacher and musicologist. He had initially started his career writing in a neoclassical style, but gradually moved further towards more complex harmonies and ...

(1896–1985) to set the poem as a cantata to commemorate their centennial anniversary in 1964. Sessions did not finish composing the work until the 1970s, dedicating it to the memories of

Civil Rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...

leader Martin Luther King Jr. and political figure Robert F. Kennedy, who were assassinated within weeks of each other in 1968. Sessions first became acquainted with ''Leaves of Grass'' in 1921 and began setting the poem as a reaction to the death of his friend, George Bartlett, although none of the sketches from that early attempt survive. He returned to the text almost fifty years later, composing a work scored for soprano, contralto, and baritone soloists, mixed chorus and orchestra. The music is described as responding "wonderfully both to the Biblical majesty and musical fluidity of Whitman's poetry, and here to, in the evocation of the gray-brown bird singing from the swamp and of the over-mastering scent of the lilacs, he gives us one of the century's great love letters to Nature." In 2004, working on a commission from the

Brooklyn Philharmonic There have been several organisations referred to as the Brooklyn Philharmonic. The most recent one was the now-defunct Brooklyn Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, an American orchestra based in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, in existence ...

, the American composer

Jennifer Higdon Jennifer Elaine Higdon (born December 31, 1962) is an American composer of contemporary classical music. She has received many awards, including the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her Violin Concerto and three Grammy Award for Best Contemp ...

adapted the poem to music for solo baritone and orchestra titled '' Dooryard Bloom''. The piece was first performed on 16 April 2005 by the baritone Nmon Ford and the Brooklyn Philharmonic under the conductor Michael Christie.

Steve Dobrogosz Steve Dobrogosz (born 26 January 1956 in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania) is an American composer, songwriter and pianist. Dobrogosz is the son of Walter Dobrogosz and Donna Bartone and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina and attended Jesse O. Sanderson ...

also set the poem to music; a CD of it was released in 2006.

References

Bibliography

Books

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Primary sources

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Journals

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Online sources

External links

The Walt Whitman Archive

"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"
at the Poetry Foundation website

from '' The Harvard Classics'' via Bartleby.com {{DEFAULTSORT:When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd American poems 1865 poems Poetry by Walt Whitman Abraham Lincoln in art Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Cultural history of the American Civil War Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln