When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloom’d
In Walt Whitman’s When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloom’d, we enjoin with a speaker who is mourning the loss of a “star” he loved. Of course, the speaker is Whitman and the “drooping star” he mourns is President Abraham Lincoln who was killed by an assassin. In the poem, Whitman uses many poetic devices with symbolism being chief among them. This analysis will explicate all sixteen stanzas of Whitman’s poem, paying particular attention to the three main symbols he uses throughout the poem as a way of adding continuity and cohesion: Lilac; Star; Thrush.
In the first stanza of Whitman’s poem we see the use of the lilac and the star to symbolize eternal recurrence of life and Abraham Lincoln respectively. The poem begins by telling us that even as the lilacs bloom perennially, the “great star” in the western sky droops. The star that has fallen is Lincoln and the speaker argues he will mourn with the return of each spring, because even though nature is reborn (as the lilacs symbolize), he suffers from grief over the loss of “him I love.” Nature holds the promise of eternal life in the sense that each spring life blooms anew, as lilacs bloom perennially and as new men are born even though others die. However, this promise of “trinity” which springs recurrence brings is still not enough to take away the sadness when someone loses one they greatly love, “I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring./Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,/Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,/And though of him I live” (Whitman 265). The use of “trinity” could be allied with the Holy trinity of the Catholic religion with its promised of renewed life in death.
The second stanza is pure anguish on behalf of the speaker. The word “O”, a traditionally classic poetic expression of intense emotion is used eight times ...