When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd

In the poem When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd I see that through out the story he has transittioned from the fear of death to embracing death. Ath the begining death is symbolized with darkness and how the gray-brown bird sings in sadness. The colors fade away as the coffin is walked across the grass. To him death meant a loss of something great, in this case Abraham Lincoln. A great man with so much to give to the world and had given so much now he is gone, to be buried. I feel like that was where it ended for Whitman. Once you were buried that was the end of a person, you have lost something important.

Then as you read the through the story you see he starts to change his mind. Colors starts to come back and towards the end he starts to realize that death is a factor in living. "Comyly lovely and soothing death, undulate round the world,serenely arriving, arriving." Everyone must die. It is just a part of living. What is surprising is a few lines down it is as if Whitman is embracing death. "Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet, have non changed for thee a chant of fullest welcome?" To accept death is a place that everyone must get to but to embrace death is a special understanding. Is it that he finally realizes that death doesn't only have to be a time of sadness? At a person's funeral many great things are said about a person and how they lived. Perhaps when a person is dead that is when you realize how much they influenced your life. Perhaps he embraced death because he sees that after death occurs is when a legacy can live on. Abraham Lincoln died, yes, but his legacy as the 16th president lives on forever. Maybe Whitman sees that even in death a person still lives in their legacy.