By Walt Whitman (1865)
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d — and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
O powerful western fallen star!
O shades of night — O moody, tearful night!
O great star disappear’d — O the black murk that hides the star!
In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings,
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom rising, delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a miracle — and from this bush in the dooryard,
With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig with its flower I break.
Sing on, there in the swamp,
O singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call;
I hear, I come presently, I understand you,
But a moment I linger — for the lustrous star has detain’d me;
The star, my departing comrade, holds and detains me.
Come, lovely and soothing Death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later delicate Death.
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands… and this for his dear sake,
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines, and the cedars dusk and dim.
Originally published in Leaves of Grass (1865) by Walt Whitman. Public domain.
Analysis
Whitman answers Lincoln’s death with an elegy that disperses grief into symbols — lilac, star, and thrush — and then braids them back together in a ritual of renewal. The poem travels from farmyard to city procession to swamp-choir, absorbing the nation’s mourning into a private liturgy. Free verse allows the chant to swell and thin like breath, alternating public procession with solitary meditation until both feel part of the same ceremony.
The poem’s most daring gesture is its invitation to “lovely and soothing Death.” Rather than a negation, death becomes a universal rhythm that makes mourning bearable and remembrance continuous. The lilac sprig the poet breaks each spring enacts an ethics of recurrence: to grieve is to join a cycle, not to escape it. The elegy closes not on triumph but on accord — a fragile harmony among nature, nation, and the softened heart.