Walt Whitman's Elegy for Lincoln

About

A reading of Whitman's great "Lilacs" elegy was the first event in the Library's 2005 celebrations marking the sesquicentennary of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" and was presented by Alice L. Birney, the Library's literary manuscript specialist, March 25, 2005. Prof. Rosemary Winslow of Catholic University of America introduced the elegy, and the reading was then performed by 11 staff members and four distinguished guests. Whitman wrote this elegant elegy in the weeks following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theater in Washington D.C., April 14, 1865. Neither Lincoln nor assassination is named in it, making the poem more universally appealing as dealing with the theme of death in general. Whitman was in New York at the time of the shooting, but he used printed and personal reports as source materials. With its central images of lilac, star and thrush, the elegy follows a classical pattern, moving from grief to consolation. Its song echoes traditional Roman and English formal elegies but is played to a new American rhythm and structure.

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Credit

Library of Congress

Language

English

Country

United States

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