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.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
One of several poems Walt Whitman wrote about Abraham Lincoln, and probably the best, ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’ was written in the summer of 1865, in the aftermath of the assassination of Lincoln in April of that year. An example of the pastoral elegy, ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’ wasn’t considered one of Whitman’s best poems by Whitman himself. However, many of his readers have disagreed, and think this among his finest.