WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE DOOR YARD BLOOMED. Swinburne called this elegy on Abraham Lincoln by Walt Whitman 'the most sonorous anthem es er chanted in the church of the world.° Such praise may be too high for the poem, but it can hardly be denied a place among the great elegies of the English lae. The highly artistic and carefully wrought structure of the poem somewhat corre sponds to that of a symphouy, in its varied and intricate harmonies, and its three leading motifs tit the lilacs, the evening star and the song of the thrush, which. constantly recurring. finally merge into the poet's song of love, regret and consolation. As 121 much of Whitman's best work, nature is here not a mere background, but is suffused with human feeling and becomes one with it. The scenes before the house in the dusk and in the swamp with the thrush, the vast panorama of country and town which loved Lincoln and which now laments him — these are not mere pictures, but realities; are not apart from the human passions of the poem, but an essential ingredient of them. The free
verse, with its Irregular rhythms and its lines of varying lcpermits an immense range of emotional eras, of exquisite melodies and vast harmonies, perhaps not attained by any other poem in American literature; and Whit man's characteristic magic ofweaves its spell in such lines as °the yellow gold gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun,' and °the huge and thoughtful night.' The elegy gives no such intellectual estimate of Lincoln as Lowell at tempts in the 'Commemoration Ode' ; it is sins ply a song,— a lament and a consolation. Its emotion appears as spontaneous and unstudied as it is sincere and unrestrained; but for all that theis none the less a nobly planned and work of art.