Question: Write a critical appreciation of the poem “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd”.
Answer: "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd” is one of the most famous poems of Walt Whitman. It is one of four elegies entitled “Memories of President Lincoln”. After Lincoln's death, they were added to the later issues of Drum-Taps in 1865. Whitman was a bard of American democratic comradeship, and he saw, in the life and death of Lincoln, the human symbol of his theme, as he saw, in the Drum-Taps volume, the keystone of the arch of his Leaves of Grass. The lilac flower may be Persian in origin and in Eastern Symbolism, it had a connection with manly love. Whitman's choice of this flower is significant in this elegy.
It is a pastoral elegy, although it does not possess all the characteristics of the classical pastoral elegy. It mourns the assassination of President Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States of America. The poem has a cyclic structure. It can be divided into three cycles. Sections 1-4 make the first cycle, sections 5-9 make the second, and sections 10-13 constitute the third cycle. Sections 14-16 restate the themes, in a sort of recapitulation, of the foregoing three cycles.
In the first cycle, the poet introduces the three principal symbols of the poem-the lilac, the star, and the bird, and expresses his deep grief for his beloved leader (Abraham Lincoln). The second cycle describes the journey of the coffin through natural scenery and industrial cities, both of which represent facets of American life. In the third cycle, the poet wonders whether he shall perfume the grave of his beloved with the sea-winds flown from the western sea, and meeting in the prairies, and the breath of his chant. He also wonders what he shall hang on the chamber walls, and what pictures he will adorn the burial-house of his beloved with. The poet asks the gray-brown bird to sing on, from the swamp, and the unseen recesses, his song of the utmost woe.
The last three sections depict the picture of death as a deliveress” because she relieves all beings of their sufferings on earth. He invites death to come overall as a dark mother. He offers grad serenades and proposes saluting and adornments and feastings for death. All the objects of nature, the sky, and the earth with its great panorama are fitting for the vast, well-veiled death. The poet saw, in his visions, hundreds of battle flags and all the ravages of battles – myriads of battle corpses, white skeletons of young men, and their debris. But the dead did not suffer; the living remained suffered. The poet ultimately goes on, passing all — the night the star, the song of the bird, and the lilacs with heart-shaped leaves. only keeps their memory for the sake of his beloved in (Lincoln) – the memory of the lilac, the star, and the bird tuning with the chant of his soul.
The poem has the structure of a syllogism – the proposition the argument, the conclusion. At the beginning of the poem, he professes "When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,/ And the great star earlier drooped in the western sky in the night,/I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.” At the end of the poem. he reiterates the same promise.
One prominent thing in the poem is Whitman's use of symbolism. A symbol is a word or a set of words that signifies an object or event. Or, in other words, the words refer to something which suggests a range of reference beyond itself. The symbols may be objects, actions, or characters meant to be taken both literally and as representative of some higher, more complex, and abstract significance that lies beyond ordinary meaning. In this poem, Whitman has not followed the symbols of the classical elegies. Instead, he has set up his own symbols which represent his individuality as a poet, and his Americanism as a patriot of America. At the beginning of the poem he talks about the trinity which ever returning spring will bring to him – lilac blooming perennially, the drooping star in the west, and the thought of his beloved leader (Lincoln). This trinity is sustained by the symbols of the recurrent spring, the western star, Venus, the hermit thrush, and the lilac. The spring, in which season Lincoln was assassinated, is the broad symbol that comprises, or brings along with it, the other symbols. It is perennial in appearance, it occurs eternally. The lilac blooms in the spring; it symbolizes love, and beauty, the poet's beautiful love for the great leader. The hermit thrush sings of grief for the great leader's death. It reminds us of Keats's nightingale. They have both similarity and dissimilarity – similar in that their songs are beautiful, melodious, and dissimilar in that Keats's nightingale! extremely happy, but Whitman's thrush is extremely unhappy; grieves over the death of the great leader. The bird is a two-01 symbol – it represents all the creatures in Nature who are stricken with grief for the dead leader. It also symbolizes the grief of the p. “And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird". The western star is again a complex symbol. It sometimes means the great leader (Lincoln), by virtue of its loftiness and brightness, as possessed. It sometimes symbolizes the essential unity of all things and therefore, the sympathy of the heavenly bodies for the affairs of human beings. Whitman's symbols are private symbols and differ from conventional symbols. They are also complex, that is, they have no one-to-one reference; they mostly involve a variety of references at the same time.
Mysticism is another element in the poem. The western star knew a month before the assassination of Lincoln and so it behaved as if it wanted to tell the poet something; it bent to him night after night. It dropped low from the sky down as if to his side, while the other stars all looked on. It felt woe for the coming tragic event of the assassination. It dropped in the night and was gone. The hermit thrush's song is in unison with the poet's thoughts that arise over the death of his beloved leader. The poet walks with death herself, and knowledge of death, and the bird receives all three of them. This communion between man and abstract force, and creature of Nature is a prominent instance of the mysticism of the poet.
Nature has been depicted in such a manner that it bespeaks the poet's great love for it. He has given vivid descriptions of scenes that he comes across on his way toward giving his gift to the coffin of Lincoln. He sat brooding over the death of his beloved leader and looked at the day "with its light, and the fields of spring,” “the heavenly aerial beauty,” “the many, moving sea-tides” and all that, assume vivid proportions in the poem.
Whitman's use of imagery is remarkably effective in the poem. By imagery, we mean the pictorial quality of a literary work achieved through a collection of images or pictures relating to the senses. The imagery evokes a complex of emotional suggestions and communicates mood, tone, and meaning. The poet has used different types of images in order to create the desired effects. There are images of the earth and the sky, the sea, of the city, and of Nature, and of all that. They come alive and produce great sensory effects on the reader.
In style, diction and versification also Whitman was as much a revolutionary as in his subject matter and attitude to life. He believed that language derives its life and vitality when it springs from one's experiences, not from books. His words and phrases show an astonishing range. They are from all spheres – literature, Slang: colloquialisms and vulgarisms of everyday life, coinages, and foreign languages like French and Spanish. The images and symbols that he uses are equally brilliant. His use of striking symbols was prompted by his way of perceiving reality in his individual way. The most notable thing about Whitman's versification is his long, sweeping and omnivorous lines that include an astonishing amount of detail. They convey a feeling of all-inclusiveness, a sense of the teeming, multitudinous life of America. The poet had a very sensitive ear for the music and melody of language. His use of assonance, consonance, and dissonance help produce such a melody.
Considering all these facts about the poem “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd”, we can, in unison with Jarrel, say, "Whitman is grand and elevated, and comprehensive, and real with an astonishing reality, and many other things."
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