When Lilacs Last in Dooryard
Bloom'd
Abraham Lincoln
Works Cited
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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.
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