When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
The Poem
“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” is a long poem in free verse divided into sixteen numbered sections. Written shortly after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the poem expresses both Walt Whitman’s grief and his effort to incorporate the president’s death into an understanding of the universal cycle of life and death.
The first two sections are devoted to lamentation, to the poet’s sense that he will never be able to overcome his despair over the loss of the one he loved, and to the premonition of catastrophe he had experienced in his...
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