When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd

The hermit thrush sings “death’s outlet song” (Canto 4, Line 7; Canto 16, Line 3), as the speaker goes on to “chant” (Canto 7, Line 3) and “warble” (Canto 10, Line 1) for death and for the dead. But this voice of “uttermost woe” (Canto 13, Line 5) also rings out “liquid and free and tender” (Canto 13, Line 6) from a “wondrous singer” (Canto 13, Line 7). For Whitman, the acute loss at death sharpens the experience of love, allowing its expression to achieve its most affecting artistic representation. He addresses the relation between artistic impulse and the understanding of mortality in his autobiographical poem “Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking,” in which his birth as a poet occurs when he learns to understand the message of nature: death. Throughout “Lilacs,” the hermit thrush sings of death to the speaker, while the singer sings his elegy to the reader.

Canto 14’s shadowy forest consoles the speaker; his walk with the two death figures resolves his grief, reflecting the depth of his loss. This canto especially focuses on death as a driving artistic force, as the speaker’s knowledge of death heightens emotional and sensory experiences.