Whitman's "Lilacs"

By popular demand — one reader — I give you one taste of my literary love.

From Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d," — his elegy to Lincoln — is a stanza (4) which I cannot read without choking up every time.

In the swamp in 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The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,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 would’st surely die.)

"Solitary the thrush, / The hermit withdrawn to himself."

We all have personal reasons to sympathize with Whitman's beautiful words. Mine, I'd rather forget — not only from the deaths experienced in my life, but from lost loves as well. Which makes this passage, whenever I read it, all the more powerful.

Comments

[Peter G]

So I tried to think of a poem or even just a stanza of a poem that spoke to me in that way. No poem sprang to mind. But a song did, or rather the lyrics. That would be Paul Simon’s I Am A Rock.

[Jason]

Yes indeed. Gone back and read this several times this evening. Thank you,