When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd

From the first line of the first canto, the speaker of “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” identifies lilacs as the place marker for his grief. As a perennial, lilacs return every year to remind the speaker of his loss, forever altering the meaning of spring. No longer a reminder of life and renewal, spring now marks a violent anniversary. Even in the speaker’s grief, though, he takes consolation that the lilacs also provide a visceral reminder of his lost friend. The poem’s focus on natural imagery—the lilac’s fragrance and their “heart-shaped leaves of rich green” (Canto 2, Lines 2 and 5)—celebrates the speaker’s ability to transport back to a particular emotional place—even a sorrowful one—in remembrance. This transformative experience in the terrain of observation, correspondence, and art furnishes the poem’s central themes.

Lilacs grew outside the door to Whitman’s mother’s home. Whitman learned of Lincoln’s assassination while visiting his mother, so the lilacs can be seen as a literal representation of Whitman’s experience.

In traditional symbolic floral language, varieties of lilacs symbolize first love and innocence. Their short blooming cycle might be seen to convey the transitory nature of young love, though here the short life cycle works as a