by Ali Shafer
Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” was published in 1865 after the assassination of US President Abraham Lincoln. This elegy for Lincoln moves me more than any other poem we’ve covered so far or that I can remember from other classes covering American poetry before 1870. Elegys innately have a kind of nostalgic, bittersweet, if not straight melancholic tone to them. I would like to think I’m an empathetic person, and Whitman did a great job of conveying his heartbreak over the loss of the President and all who died throughout the Civil War. Honestly, for the first few sections of the poem, without the context of the book and the class I would’ve thought it was a poem mourning a lost lover.
I feel for Whitman, Lincoln, all those lost, and those left behind to, as Whitman pointed out, mourn their loss. That being said, I love how Whitman despite free verse was able to make the poem feel more thought out and intentional with the 16 sections mirroring our 16th president who was lost, and the repeat symbols beyond the trinity of the star, lilac, and memory of Lincoln/thrush. Things like cedars and pine, night, the dooryard, comrades, songs, perfume, and the swamp come up repeatedly and ground the poem in sensory imagery and language more than some of his other more stream-of-consciousness works. I love the hopefulness of the poem too, reassuring his audience that those lost are at peace in section 15 and coming back to images of new beginnings like the lilacs and spring.
Whitman, across many of his poems, emphasizes connections and emotions and loss or pleasure because of these ties. I think to many, including myself, it’s reassuring to see someone so vulnerably share their feelings and assert that you aren’t alone in sad experiences or joys.
Like I said, without the context I know, you could read most of the poem and apply it to mourning any loved one. It’s relatable and Whitman asserting that the memory of the lost person comes back might make someone struggling to move past a loss feel validated. Whitman never implies that the recurrence of thought is bad or burdensome (line 3).
He also covers a full range of emotions and varying responses to loss, like stages of grief, considering even in section 2 I think there’s more of an angry or self-pitying tone with the repeated “O” lines. This is compared to the rest of the poem which seems to be more calm and contemplative or neutrally descriptive if not a little sad or hopeful tone-wise. For a different example, I read section 3 as an anchoring section relying on literal vivid imagery of a spring scene, a relief from heavier emotions.
Section 4 also seems to be a cleverly included metaphor (intended or otherwise) of maybe himself as the thrush, since as we discussed from “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” bird song and mourning is supposedly what inspired himself or at least his speaker to write. It could be saying after the loss of the Civil War and Lincoln, poetry as an outlet may be the only thing keeping him going or making the pain livable.
The ability to elicit an emotional response from me is the main thing that makes a poem memorable and dear. I think it’s especially impressive if someone is able to make a longer poem stick in the mind of the reader through thoughtful use of creative images and recurring language. Whitman being an interesting character himself also helps his work generally stand out to me, but this is by far my favorite of his poems. Though, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” is another I like a lot for similar reasons in its emphasis on the value of interpersonal relationships. That’s a big part of what makes us human and how we’ve persisted as a species.
In flower symbolism, Lilacs have been thought to represent love, remembrance, and acceptance. All appropriate themes for the content of Whitman’s poem.