When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd

When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom'd was an extremely long poem. Unlike the Living Cookbook this poem has a lot more to say. Though this poem was long it had a lot of beautiful descriptions and imagery that you could paint with your mind as you read.

Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west

O shades of night- O moody, tearful night!

Stands the lilacs-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green, with many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love

Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities, amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep'd from the ground, spotting the gray debris, amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the endless grass, passing the yellow-spear'd wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprisen.

Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide

And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody, and at last but a few shreds left on the staffs (and all in silence), and the staffs all splinter'd and broken.

These are beautiful imagery that Walt Whitman painted for the death of Abraham Lincoln. Though the poem was long, I personally do not think that if he cramped all of his thoughts into a page would have painted a picture as he did here. Like Professor Corrigan states "If a poem is summarized then perhaps in the process of summarizing a poem we truly loose the essences of a poem as it is to be." Looking at all of these (and many more in the poem) you could not sum up the images that Whitman must have seen in his mind as he wrote. Walt Whitman used many old English which makes the poem even harder to read it was a nice touch. It made the poem even older, like in Abraham Lincoln's time.