Lilac and Star and Thrush
Salute Abe Lincoln
My last column on poets
inspired by birds’ songs, ended with mention of Robert Frost’s poem,
“Come In” and the way thrush music seemed to Frost to be an
invitation to “come in” to the dark woods and “lament.” But Frost
rejects the invitation because he was “out for stars.”
But an earlier poet, Walt
Whitman, wrote perhaps “the greatest elegy in literature,” according
to Yale’s top literary scholar, Harold Bloom, because he heeded the
invitation of the thrush to lament the passing of America’s greatest
president, Abraham Lincoln.
The poem created by that
decision is When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed,
and that poem is so fine, I urge serious readers to Google it up so
you can study it more deeply. If you own, Leaves of Grass,
all the better. I find having a book in hand far better. One can
make notes in the margins, highlight lines that stick, and carry it
into the woods for more intimate study. By the way, Bloom’s fine
book, How to Read and Why, has revealing chapters on Whitman
and many other writers.
Toward the end of the
Civil War, Whitman came to the Washington D. C. area to nurse and
care for his brother and other wounded soldiers. There he saw daily
the agony of the wounded, the many amputations and deaths. He also
caught occasional glimpses of Lincoln and saw what a heavy burden
the war had lain on him. So news of his death struck the poet very
hard, and that grief brought forth his beautiful elegy.
The poem rests on three
symbols Whitman saw almost daily, a bright star nightly “drooping”
closer and closer to the smoky darkness of the horizon. Then the
lilacs he saw blooming fragrantly with their heart-shaped leaves,
and lastly the singing of the hermit thrush he would hear on his
nightly meditative walks along a path between woods and a swamp.
The poem opens and deftly
sets the scene, “When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed,/ And the
great star drooped in the western sky in the night,/I mourned and
yet shall mourn/ With ever returning spring.”
“Ever
returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,/ Lilac blooming
perennial, and drooping star in the west,/ And thought of him I
love.”
The thrush is not
introduced until the third verse. With his melodiously passionate
song pouring forth the depth of Whitman’s love for his beloved
president, the thrush personifies the poet himself, “In the swamp,
in the secluded recesses/ A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song./
Solitary the thrush/ The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the
settlements/ Sings by himself a song./ Song of the bleeding
throat/Death’s outlet song of life,/ (For well dear brother I know,
If thou wast not granted to sing/ Thou wouldst surely die.)
More of the thrush’s song
reappears in verse 13: “Sing on, sing on, you gray brown
bird/...Pour your chant from the bushes/ Limitless out of the dusk,
out of the cedars and pines,/ Sing on dearest brother, warble your
reedy song/ Loud human song with uttermost woe./ O liquid and free
and tender!/ O wild loose to my soul—O wondrous singer!/ You only I
hear --yet the star holds me, (but will soon depart,)/ Yet the lilac
with mastering odor holds me.”
A verse that puzzled me
for a time is the one celebrating “death and the knowledge of
death.” “Dark mother ever gliding near with soft feet,/ Have none
chanted for thee...a chant of fullest welcome?/ Then I chant it for
thee, I glorify thee above all...that when thou must come, you come
unfalteringly/ Approach strong deliveress...I joyously sing the
dead,/ Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee.”
As a Christian, these
lines seem better to describe the ocean of God’s love than “the last
enemy to be destroyed” mentioned in the Bible. But Whitman had
become disenchanted with organized religion, and had fashioned his
own vision, seeing death as a “Mother,” who puts an end to suffering
and war and forgives all “the “sins that flesh is heir to.” Given
all the suffering he saw as a nurse, doubtless he prayed for many to
be released from their agony by death.
But we must not let any
disagreements created by this verse lead us to ignore the sheer
beauty of his loving appreciation of Lincoln created by so many of
the lines celebrating the lilac, the star, and the thrush: “Passing
the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul/
Passing I leave thee, lilac with heart-shaped leaves...I cease my
song for thee...O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night/
Yet to each and all retrievements out of the night:/ The song, the
wondrous chant of the gray brown bird. Comrades mine in the midst/
And their memory ever to keep, for the dead I love so well,/ For the
sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands --and this for his
dear sake,/ Lilac and star and bird, twined with the chant of my
soul/ There in the fragrant pines, and the cedars dusk and dim.”
There may be other
eulogies lauding Lincoln’s greatness. But few, I think are more
profound or melodious than Walt Whitman’s.
Gene Pinkney 7/1/23 for
The daily News
