When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
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When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd is an elegy written by Walt Whitman shortly after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Admired as one of Whitman's greatest poems, "Lilacs" has influenced many other works in literature and the arts.
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[edit] Symbolism
The second line of the poem "And the great star early droop'd ..." establishes the allusion to Lincoln with "Great Star" as an allusion to the 16th president of the United States. The blooming of the lilacs in April, the same month in which Lincoln was assassinated, serves as Whitman's yearly reminder of Lincoln's death [1].
[edit] Music
Conductor Robert Shaw commissioned Paul Hindemith, during his wartime exile in the United States, to set the text of "Lilacs" to music in his Requiem for those we love (1946). There is also a cantata by Roger Sessions setting this poem, written in 1971. David Conte extracted text from the poem for use in his "Invocation & Dance" (1989). George Crumb composed Apparition in 1979, using the text of "Lilacs", mostly from the "Death Carol" section of the poem. Kurt Weill uses the third stanza in his musical Street Scene.
[edit] Further reading
- Max Cavitch, American Elegy: The Poetry of Mourning from the Puritans to Whitman (University of Minnesota Press, 2007). Includes a chapter on the poem. ISBN 081664893X
[edit] External links
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