According to Edith Wharton, however, James was a believer in Walt Whitman’s poem by his later years. James was not alone in his praise, either, as ‘Lilacs’ has influenced a considerable number of poets over the last century, including T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, and Allen Ginsberg.
Origins of ‘Lilacs’
‘When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom’d’ is a response to the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Whitman, who served as a Union caregiver in the American Civil War, mourned the loss of whom he considered an archetypal man.
Whitman included ‘Lilacs’ in his collection Memories of President Lincoln and the poem is often viewed as his last influential piece of writing. It is an extensive work in sixteen sections, using the long, emotive lines that became his trademark.
While centered upon the feeling of tragedy from Lincoln’s death, ‘Lilacs’ is quite free in its material. The poem is elegiac in tone, but also an optimistic search to balance life with the certainty of death.
Opening Sections of 'Lilacs'
The first two sections establish a feeling of melancholy, with the narrator (assumably Whitman himself) lamenting an early descent of Venus, the evening star:
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Recalling Lincoln, the narrator has fallen into despair that seems eternal. The eternal optimist Whitman, however, does not wallow in his gloom and already begins a difficult climb towards resolution in section 3:
In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings,
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love…
Whitman, who often sees a conflict between light and dark forces, makes this juxtaposition in ‘Lilacs.’ We quickly move from the dark sky to the bright lilac-bush to a menacing swamp out of which sings the ‘hermit thrush,’ a bird whose voice evokes the recent tragedy.
'Lilacs' Sections 5 Through 14
In sections 5 through 7, the transport of Lincoln’s coffin - which moved across six states - is represented in breathtaking detail. Sadness returns, but it encourages Whitman forward in his search for truth. Venus and the hermit thrush recur in sections 8 through 10; a month has now passed since Whitman first experienced the sorrow of Lincoln’s passing.
Whitman has reached great poetics, yet he underplays them by asking major questions in sections 10 and 11:
O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved? [sec. 10]
O what shall I hang on the chamber walls?
And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,
To adorn the burial-house of him I love? [sec. 11]
Despite the several types of mastery that Whitman has achieved, in these sections he asks how exactly to voice his admiration for Lincoln. The answer comes in Whitman’s embrace of the human and natural worlds shaping America, as described in sections 10 through 14.
Section 14 is pivotal, as this embrace involves a complete acceptance of death as the termination of life. ‘Knowledge of death’ and ‘the thought of death’ become two friends walking hand-in-hand with Whitman as they enter the swamp and form one song with the hermit thrush.
Final Sections of 'Lilacs'
Section 15 contains flashbacks of the American Civil War, still dominant in Whitman’s mind. But the poem reaches solace by its ending with indication that the poet must edge away from his sorrow and look to the future:
…Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,
I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring.
'Lilacs' has never been short of followers and is considered by various essayists, including Harold Bloom, as America’s greatest poem. The place of 'Lilacs' in American anthologies is nearly sacrosanct and its ideas have been detected in the work of many poets since its original publication.
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