{ "id": "walt-whitman/when-lilacs-last-in-the-dooryard-bloomd", "title": "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d", "poet": "Walt Whitman", "poet_slug": "walt-whitman", "language": "en", "book": "Leaves of Grass", "book_slug": "leaves-of-grass", "book_kind": "volume", "sequence": 185, "container": "Memories of President Lincoln", "epigraph": null, "first_published": { "year": 1865, "venue": "Sequel to Drum-Taps (autumn 1865)", "note": "This text follows the 1891–92 “deathbed” edition of Leaves of Grass.", "uncertain": false, "sources": [ "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Lilacs_Last_in_the_Dooryard_Bloom%27d", "https://whitmanarchive.org/item/encyclopedia_entry67" ] }, "source": { "kind": "standard-ebooks", "repo": "standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass", "file": "memories-of-president-lincoln.xhtml", "upstream": [ "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1322", "https://archive.org/details/leavesgrass03whitgoog" ], "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)" }, "verification": { "level": "structural-only", "last_checked": "2026-08-12" }, "stats": { "n_lines": 206, "n_stanzas": 42, "n_parts": 16, "longest_line_chars": 108, "max_indent": 0 }, "site_ready": true, "parts": [ { "ordinal": "1", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 0, 2 ] }, { "ordinal": "2", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 2, 3 ] }, { "ordinal": "3", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 3, 4 ] }, { "ordinal": "4", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 4, 7 ] }, { "ordinal": "5", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 7, 8 ] }, { "ordinal": "6", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 8, 9 ] }, { "ordinal": "7", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 9, 11 ] }, { "ordinal": "8", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 11, 12 ] }, { "ordinal": "9", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 12, 13 ] }, { "ordinal": "10", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 13, 15 ] }, { "ordinal": "11", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 15, 17 ] }, { "ordinal": "12", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 17, 19 ] }, { "ordinal": "13", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 19, 22 ] }, { "ordinal": "14", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 22, 34 ] }, { "ordinal": "15", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 34, 39 ] }, { "ordinal": "16", "title": null, "stanza_range": [ 39, 42 ] } ], "stanzas": [ [ { "text": "When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And thought of him I love.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "O powerful western fallen star!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "O shades of night⁠—O moody, tearful night!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "O great star disappear’d⁠—O the black murk that hides the star!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "O cruel hands that hold me powerless⁠—O helpless soul of me!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "With every leaf a miracle⁠—and from this bush in the dooryard,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "A sprig with its flower I break.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "In the swamp in secluded recesses,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Solitary the thrush,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Sings by himself a song.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Song of the bleeding throat,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Death’s outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "If thou wast not granted to sing thou would’st surely die.)", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep’d from the ground, spotting the gray debris,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the endless grass,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Passing the yellow-spear’d wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprisen,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Night and day journeys a coffin.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "With the pomp of the inloop’d flags with the cities draped in black,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil’d women standing,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the unbared heads,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour’d around the coffin,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs⁠—where amid these you journey,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "With the tolling tolling bells’ perpetual clang,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Here, coffin that slowly passes,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I give you my sprig of lilac.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "(Nor for you, for one alone,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane and sacred death.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "All over bouquets of roses,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "For you and the coffins all of you O death.)", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "O western orb sailing the heaven,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walk’d,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "As I walk’d in silence the transparent shadowy night,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after night,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "As you droop’d from the sky low down as if to my side, (while the other stars all look’d on,)", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "As we wander’d together the solemn night, (for something I know not what kept me from sleep,)", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west how full you were of woe,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparent night,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "As I watch’d where you pass’d and was lost in the netherward black of the night,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you sad orb,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Sing on there in the swamp,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "O singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I hear, I come presently, I understand you,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detain’d me,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The star my departing comrade holds and detains me.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love?", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Sea-winds blown from east and west,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till there on the prairies meeting,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "These and with these and the breath of my chant,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I’ll perfume the grave of him I love.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "O what shall I hang on the chamber walls?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To adorn the burial-house of him I love?", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid and bright,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun, burning, expanding the air,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves of the trees prolific,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a wind-dapple here and there,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky, and shadows,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen homeward returning.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Lo, body and soul⁠—this land,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light, Ohio’s shores and flashing Missouri,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And ever the far-spreading prairies cover’d with grass and corn.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The gentle soft-born measureless light,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill’d noon,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Sing on, sing on you gray-brown bird,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "O liquid and free and tender!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "O wild and loose to my soul⁠—O wondrous singer!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "You only I hear⁠—yet the star holds me, (but will soon depart,)", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Now while I sat in the day and look’d forth,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and the farmers preparing their crops,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and forests,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "In the heavenly aerial beauty, (after the perturb’d winds and the storms,)", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices of children and women,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sail’d,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with labor,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals and minutia of daily usages,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And the streets how their throbbings throbb’d, and the cities pent⁠—lo, then and there,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Appear’d the cloud, appear’d the long black trail,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of companions,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "And the singer so shy to the rest receiv’d me,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The gray-brown bird I know receiv’d us comrades three,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "From deep secluded recesses,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Came the carol of the bird.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "And the charm of the carol rapt me,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the night,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Come lovely and soothing death,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "In the day, in the night, to all, to each,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Sooner or later delicate death.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Prais’d be the fathomless universe,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And for love, sweet love⁠—but praise! praise! praise!", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Approach strong deliveress,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the dead,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "From me to thee glad serenades,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "The night in silence under many a star,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And the soul turning to thee O vast and well-veil’d death,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Over the tree-tops I float thee a song,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Over the dense-pack’d cities all and the teeming wharves and ways,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee O death.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "To the tally of my soul,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "With pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Loud in the pines and cedars dim,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And I with my comrades there in the night.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "As to long panoramas of visions.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "And I saw askant the armies,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierc’d with missiles I saw them,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs, (and all in silence,)", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And the staffs all splinter’d and broken.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "But I saw they were not as was thought,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer’d not,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The living remain’d and suffer’d, the mother suffer’d,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer’d,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And the armies that remain’d suffer’d.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Passing the visions, passing the night,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades’ hands,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Victorious song, death’s outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding the night,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting with joy,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "I leave thee there in the dooryard, blooming, returning with spring.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "I cease from my song for thee,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.", "indent": 0 } ], [ { "text": "Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "And the tallying chant, the echo arous’d in my soul,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands⁠—and this for his dear sake,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,", "indent": 0 }, { "text": "There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.", "indent": 0 } ] ] }