Summary
and Form
This 1865 poem is part of a
series of pieces written after Lincoln’s assassination.
While it does not display all the conventions of the form, this is nevertheless
considered to be a pastoral elegy: a poem of mourning that makes use of elaborate
conventions drawn from the natural world and rustic human society. Virgil is the most
prominent classical practitioner of the form; Milton’s “Lycidas” and Shelley’s “Adonais” are
the two best-known examples in the English tradition. One of the most important
features of the pastoral elegy is the depiction of the deceased and the poet
who mourns him as shepherds. While the association is not specifically made in
this poem, it must surely have been in Whitman’s mind as he wrote: Lincoln, in
many ways, was the “shepherd” of the American people during wartime, and his
loss left the North in the position of a flock without a leader. As in
traditional pastoral elegies, nature mourns Lincoln’s death in this poem,
although it does so in some rather unconventional ways (more on that in a
moment). The poem also makes reference to the problems of modern times in its
brief, shadowy depictions of Civil War battles. The natural order is contrasted
with the human one, and Whitman goes so far as to suggest that those who have
died violent deaths in war are actually the lucky ones, since they are now
beyond suffering.
Above all this is a public poem
of private mourning. In it Whitman tries to determine the best way to mourn a
public figure, and the best way to mourn in a modern world. In his resignation
at the end of the poem, and in his use of disconnected motifs, he suggests that
the kind of ceremonial poetry a pastoral elegy represents may no longer have a
place in society; instead, symbolic, intensely personal forms must take over.
Commentary
“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard
Bloom’d” is composed of three separate yet simultaneous poems. One follows the
progress of Lincoln’s coffin on its way to the president’s burial. The second
stays with the poet and his sprig of lilac, meant to be laid on the coffin in
tribute, as he ruminates on death and mourning. The third uses the symbols of a
bird and a star to develop an idea of a nature sympathetic to yet separate from
humanity. The progression of the coffin is followed by a sad irony. Mourners,
dressed in black and holding offerings of flowers, turn out in the streets to see
Lincoln’s corpse pass by. The Civil War is raging, though, and many of these
people have surely lost loved ones of their own. Yet their losses are subsumed
in a greater national tragedy, which in its publicness and in the fact that
this poem is being written as part of the mourning process, is set up to be a
far greater loss than that of their own family members. In this way the poem
implicitly asks the question, “What is the worth of a man? Are some men worth
more than others?” The poet’s eventual inability to mourn, and the depictions
of anonymous death on the battlefields, suggest that something is wrong here.
The poet vacillates on the nature
of symbolic mourning. At times he seems to see his offering of the lilac
blossom as being symbolically given to all the dead; at other moments he sees
it as futile, merely a broken twig. He wonders how best to do honor to the
dead, asking how he would decorate the tomb. He suggests that he would fill it
with portraits of everyday life and everyday men. This is a far cry from the
classical statuary and elaborate floral arrangements usually associated with
tombs. The language in the poem follows a similar shift. In the first stanzas
the language is formal and at times even archaic, filled with exhortations and
rhetorical devices. By the end much of the ceremoniousness has been stripped
away; the poet offers only “lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of
[his] soul.” Eventually the poet simply leaves behind the sprig of lilac, and
“cease[s] from [his] song,” still unsure of just how to mourn properly.
The final image of the poem is of
“the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.” All has been worked through
save nature, which remains separate and beyond. The death-song of the bird
expresses an understanding and a beauty that Whitman, even while he
incorporates it into his poem, cannot quite master for himself. Unlike the
pastoral elegies of old, which use a temporary rift with nature to comment on
modernity, this one shows a profound and permanent disconnection between the
human and natural worlds. “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” mourns for
Lincoln in a way that is all the more profound for seeing the president’s death
as only a smaller, albeit highly symbolic, tragedy in the midst of a world of
confusion and sadness.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Notes made from internet.
source ; https://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/whitman/section7/
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