The Cosmic Loss of Abraham Lincoln According to Walt Whitman (ENG 344)
The Cosmic Loss of Abraham Lincoln According to Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman’s four-poem collection “Memories of President Lincoln” is a eulogy for Abraham Lincoln, but it is also a declaration that with Lincoln’s death the cosmos, including everyone and everything within it, is diminished. Whitman had great admiration for Lincoln as the “Redeemer President of These States” and proclaimed to “love the President personally.” (qtd. in Hirschhorn) The two men shared an ideology, although they never had the opportunity to meet or have a personal relationship, Whitman believed their values and ideas for the nation aligned— “Both were committed to free labor and territorial expansion, but the preservation of the Union was paramount. (Pannapacker) Lincoln’s tragic assassination was a devastating event for the nation, but also for Whitman himself. The four-poem set memorializing Lincoln is a tribute to the late President, but it is also a testament to Lincoln’s powerful legacy and unifying text for the nation. Due to Whitman’s overwhelming inclusiveness—citizens, soldiers without distinction of north or south, cities, farmsteads, natural creatures, and the cosmos are featured and mourn the loss together. The collection of four deliberately and masterfully sequenced poems begins expansively and terminates with extreme focus at Lincoln’s own ashes.
The first poem, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” at over two-hundred lines in sixteen stanzas, is the longest of the four and also the greatest in scope. This poem places the reader into spring—the season of Lincoln’s death—amongst blooming lilacs and immediately launches from there to the cosmos before descending through forests and villages, farmhouses, and cities, through the swamp, throngs of mourning people and the wreckage of battlefields littered with the bleached bones of the fallen. Whitman immerses the reader in nature; he was notable in his views on nature because he included man-made objects, tools, machines, villages and cities as nature—a departure from his contemporaries’ in naturalism (Doudna)
From the beginning of “Lilacs,” the speaker announces his sorrow over the loss of Lincoln as “him I love” and carries the reader to see the scale of the calamity as “O great star disappear’d—O the black murk that hides the star!” (Whitman 277) Lincoln in this passage is the star and engulfed and hidden by the “black murk” of death. The cosmos grieves for the loss of Lincoln. The speaker then carries the experience of loss an old farmhouse, which according to Hirschhorn represents a tribute to Lincoln’s impact on democratic America. From the farmhouse, the speaker directs us back to the earth and to nature as he “A sprig with its flower [he] break[s].” (Whitman 277) With these lines, the speaker connects the experience of death and grief with the environment while also gathering a tribute for the fallen President.
In the fifth stanza that the speaker introduces the journey of the coffin and the mourning of the population. Cities are “draped in black” and the procession of mourners is long and winding” with “a silent sea of faces…somber … a thousand voices rising strong and solemn” as they sing dirges at the coffins passing. As the coffin passes, the speaker, among the mourners surrenders his sprig of lilac, the offering collected previously, to the passing body of the hero— “O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies.” (Whitman 277) According to Hirschhorn, this tribute is both an expression of affection to Lincoln but is also Whitman’s desire to offer similar tribute to all the dead.
Arrived at the object of our sorrow, the speaker again launches us to the cosmos. The “western orb sailing the heaven” as it “bent to me night after night” represents Lincoln. He and the speaker wandered “together” to symbolize that their beliefs and ideas aligned. The disappearance of the star, “dropt in the night,” is the passing of Lincolns soul from this life—the “star of my departing comrade.” (Whitman 279)
“The cloud, the long black trail” references the train that carried Lincoln’s body and signals a dark harbinger of death carrying sorrow throughout the nation. The speaker feels surrounded by death and sorrow: “And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.” (Whitman 281) With the speaker’s personification of the thought and knowledge of death, he carries us with him through the experience of deep and profound loss. When he runs and huddles in the swamp accompanied by his two companions, the thought and knowledge of death, the reader is there with him. When the thrush sings the song of death, it is singing it to all of us as we share in the depth of despair, sorrow, and pain—even the pines are ghostly and still. (Whitman 281)
Approaching the end of “Lilacs,” Whitman pays tribute to the fallen soldiers of the Civil War. Whitman was known for visiting wounded soldiers and treating them with compassion and affection. (Doudna) Therefore, the empathy shown for those slain or wounded in the war is not a fabrication. It is born of empathy and experience. The armies, the battle flags, the smoke and torn and bloody, staffs splintered and broken, and the corpses of soldiers and debris of the war and all of the tragedy is encompassed and represented by Lincoln’s passing and Lincoln’s death represents all death. (Eiselein)
The final stanza of the poem brings together all the components of the poem. Nature, represented by the lilac, animals by the bird, and the cosmos, the star, all suffer the loss of “wisest soul.” (Whitman 283) It’s with this long poem that Whitman introduces us to the pain and suffering those that survive Lincoln suffer. Subsequent poems shrink in scope—they are less panoramic, but they share the depth of the sorrow Whitman communicates.
The second poem in the set is “O Captain, My Captain,” and it is a short twenty-four-line poem—just over a tenth of the length of “Lilacs.” While a much shorter work, it is also confined to a much smaller space. Whitman presents a mourning sailor aboard a ship whose captain has just fallen. The American ship of state makes its return to safe harbor after victory, but its magnificent leader, its captain, is dead. (Hirschhorn) The sailor implores his fallen leader to rise because “The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won, / the port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting” but the captain does not rise, he “does not answer, his lips are pale and still.” (Whitman 284) While these lines aren’t as transformative or symbolic as the swamp and the thrush’s song, the depth of pain and emotion is the same. The tragic loss of a great man is made all the greater since it comes after great conflict and victory. Lincoln was killed only five days after the General Robert E. Lee’s surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia where Lee wrote:
After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.
I need not tell the brave survivors of so many hard-fought battles … that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that could compensate for the loss that must have attended the continuance of the contest …
By the terms of this agreement officers and men can return to their homes … (qtd. in Foote 956)
When put into context, this poem becomes even more powerful. It is one of Whitman’s more popular, well-known poems, but the march of time has faded the immediacy of the cry, “O Captain” and its direct connection to a leader’s assassination only days after victory. When the collection was published in its current form, part of Whitman’s motivation in renaming the collection and adding Lincoln’s name was because he felt that “the immediacy of Lincoln’s death had faded into historical memory.” (Eiselein) This of course, is even more true today, one hundred fifty-five years later. While Lincoln still carries a place of great honor in the nations collective memory, the visceral nature of his loss has long faded and even in circles were “O Captain” is frequently recited or quoted such as military events, it is for its symbolism more than its direct connection to Lincoln.
The third poem, “Hush’d Be the Camps To-day” is shorter still than the preceding two poems at only twelve lines and was the first poem written in the series. (Eiselein) Instead of the mournful sailor on the ship of the nations, the speaker transports us to quiet camps and soldiers that “each with musing soul retire to celebrate, / Our dear commander’s death.” (Whitman 285) The ship of state has anchored, and we are among those that fought for the unity of the young nation. The soldiers in this poem are not wracked by the immediacy of the loss of their leader. Instead, they mourn and intern their leader with a celebration of “the love we bore him.” The soldiers, like the thrush in “Lilacs” sing for Lincoln, “one verse, for the heavy hearts of soldiers.” (Whitman 285) “Hush’d” is a winding down of the eulogy. Whitman, so far, transported the reader from the cosmos, through cities and villages, forests and swamps, and shared the loss with citizens of the nation, and alighted on the ship of state after a long war, and stepped into the camps of mourning soldiers to “invault the coffin.” (Whitman 285) The journey is nearly complete.
The final poem, “This Dust Was Once the Man” is a mere four lines long. After the long, winding journey the preceding three poems have taken, the reader is presented with the remains of the great Abraham Lincoln, as dust:
This dust was once the man,
Gentle, plain, just and resolute, under whose cautious hand,
Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age,
Was saved the Union of these States. (Whitman 285)
This poem is final. Whitman immediately assaults the reader with the vision of Lincoln as dust. However, it is uplifting in the end. The mourning is over. That work is complete and thorough in the previous three poems. At the end Whitman celebrates what Lincoln was able to accomplish.
Walt Whitman admired Abraham Lincoln and his death had “profound impact” on him. (Eiselein). The works collected in “Memories of President Lincoln” are an encapsulation of the hope, triumph, loss, and grief, that Whitman felt for Abraham Lincoln both while he was alive and after his death. Whitman lectured on Lincoln’s death from many times from 1879-1890 referring to him as the “ ‘first great Martyr Chief’ of the United States of America” (Griffin) His collection of poems, arranged in their 1881 published order, and grouped under their current title, are a deliberate effort to memorialize Lincoln, but also to serve as an immersion in the collective spirit of hope and loss that Lincoln represented. Whitman spends a great deal of effort on describing the feelings and sentiments of Lincolns death, but he extends his words on death to represent all death, and ultimately, represents death as peace for the dead as he describes near the end of “Lilacs.” This collection, read together, has a profound ordering of the forces of nature, love, life, and death, anchored on one great figure, but universal and applicable to the human condition that remains as relevant today as the day Whitman first penned it.
Works Cited
Doudna, Martin K. “Nature.” The Walt Whitman Archive, 13 Feb 2020, www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/encyclopedia/entry_551.html
Eiselein, Gregory. “Lincoln’s Death.” 1865. The Walt Whitman Archive, 13 Feb 2020,www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/encyclopedia/entry_30.html
Foote, Shelby. The Civil War: A Narrative. Volume Three: Red River to Appomattox. Vintage Books, 1986.
Griffin, Larry D. “The Death of Abraham Lincoln.” 1879. The Walt Whitman Archive, 13 Feb 2020, www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/encyclopedia/entry_427.html
Hirschhorn, Bernard. “Memories of President Lincoln.” The Walt Whitman Archive, 13 Feb 2020, www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/encyclopedia/entry_538.html
Pannapacker, William A. “Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865).” The Walt Whitman Archive, 13 Feb 2020, www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/encyclopedia/entry_280.html
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass and Other Writings. Edited by Michael Moon. Norton, 2002.
