By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’ is one of the most famous poems by the American poet, Walt Whitman (1819-92). Across 206 lines of innovative free verse, Whitman offers an elegy for Abraham Lincoln, who had been assassinated shortly before Whitman wrote the poem. You can read ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’ here before proceeding to our analysis below.