When Lilacs Last in Dooryard Bloom'd

Abraham Lincoln

Works Cited

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

This fisherman, editor, journalist, carpenter, bureaucrat, and poet revolutionized poetry by choosing such uncommon subjects such as the "values of the common, the miracle of the mouse, the wholesome soundness of the calloused hand, the body's sweat," and men and women's sexuality in his anthology Leaves of Grass. His free verse, use of rhythm and choice of symbols pushed the limits of the poetic form and made it accessible even to the common man/woman. Several of his masterpieces include the poems "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," or "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" where he paid tribute to Abraham Lincoln and his cause and which revealed his American democratic idealism. He sympathized with the efforts to end slavery and save the Union during the American Civil War. He strongly believed in the liberty of all human beings in this cosmos of which we are all part. The preface to the Leaves of Grass reveals his idealism:

They are the voice and exposition of liberty….The attitude of great poets is to cheer up slaves and horrify despots. The turn of their necks, the sound of their feet, the motions of their wrists, are full of hazard to the one and hope to the other.

 

When liberty goes it is not the first to go nor the second or third to go…it waits for all the rest to go…it is the last…when the laws of the free are grudgingly permitted and the laws of informers and bloodmoney are sweet to the taste of the people…when I and you walk around upon the earth stung with compassion at the sight of the numberless brothers answering our equal friendship and calling no man master-and when we are elated with noble joy at the sight of slaves…or rather when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth-then only shall the instinct of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth.