Death and Regeneration in Walt Whitmans Poem, When Lilacs Last In The

Death and Regeneration in Walt Whitmans Poem, When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloomd Whitman in 1865 wrote an elegy for President Lincoln entitled When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomd. The Lilacs elegy is an outpouring of the deep sense of loss that Whitman felt after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. The Presidents death was a great shock to the poet it overwhelmed him in a very personal way. Whitman recognized Lincolns excellence and importance.When Whitman early hear of the assassination, it was the spring of the year and the lilacs were in bloom. The poem is heavily symbolic. In this first section, Whitman introduces two of the three central symbols used in development. The poet appears in company with the Lilac blooming and the drooping star. The lilac represents love as puff up as resurrection and rebirth. The star symbolizes the slain Abraham Lincoln and comes to symbolize, also, the poets heavy grief for him. The star, or Lincoln, once celestial and s hining like a strong read to those beneath it, has now droopd early. Lincoln i...