"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd- is an elegy on the death of Abraham Lincoln, though it never mentions the president by name. Like most elegies, it develops from the personal (the death of Lincoln and the poet's grief) to the impersonal (the death of "all of you" and death itself); from an intense feeling of grief to the thought of reconciliation. The poem, which is one of the finest Whitman ever wrote, is a dramatization of this feeling of loss. This elegy is grander and more touching than Whitman's other two elegies on Lincoln's death, "0 Captain! My Captain!" and "Hush'd Be the Camps To-day." The form is elegiac but also contains elements found in operatic music, such as the aria and recitative. The song of the hermit thrush, for example, is an "aria."
Abraham Lincoln was shot in Washington, D.C., by Booth on April 14, 1865, and died the following day. The body was sent by train from Washington to Springfield, Illinois. As it crossed the continent, it was saluted by the people of America. Whitman has not only men and women but even natural objects saluting the dead man.
The first cycle of the poem, comprising sections 1-4, presents the setting in clear perspective. As spring returns, the lilacs blossom, and the planet Venus "nearly dropp'd in the western sky," the poet mourns the loss "of him I love." He mourns the "powerful western fallen star" now covered by "black murk" in the "tearful night," and he is "powerless" and "helpless" because the cloud around him "will not free my soul." He observes a lilac bush, is deeply affected by its perfume, and believes that "every leaf [is] a miracle." He breaks off a small branch with "heart-shaped Leaves." A shy, solitary thrush, like a secluded hermit, sings a song which is an expression of its inmost grief. It sings "death's outlet song of life."
