When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd

Whitman volunteered to care for wounded soldiers during the American Civil War; now, as the war finally seemed to be ending, hope for the country’s renewal vanished with the sudden loss of their leader. Envisioning his role as the voice of the people, Whitman struggled to express an avalanche of sentiment and disbelief. His grief was personal; Whitman wrote about his admiration for Lincoln and attended his second inauguration in March before the April assassination.

“Lilacs” came third among the poems dedicated to Lincoln’s memory, following the more conventional “O Captain, My Captain!” Preceding that, “Hush’d Be the Camps Today,” dated four days after Lincoln’s death, speaks from the soldiers’ point of view and serves as a memorial to soldiers lost in the war. In “Lilacs,” Whitman found balance between public and personal, addressing both the national mourning and his personal sorrow in a more daring lyric form than its more conventional predecessors.

“O Captain, My Captain” employs an extended metaphor in which a young sailor laments the loss of his leader. With its conventional motifs, use of rhyme, and in the details of its

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