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Walt WhitmanA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
"When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d" by Walt Whitman (1865)
This poem is Whitman’s elegy for former President Abraham Lincoln and serves as a counterpoint to “Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night.” In keeping with the subject of this later poem, Lincoln’s assassination, “Lilacs” eschews the personal quality of “Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night” in favor of lines creating a synecdoche—when a term for something is representative of the whole—between Lincoln’s death and that of all soldiers in the American Civil War.
"Song of Myself, 6 [A child said, What is the grass?]" by Walt Whitman (1855)
“Song of Myself, 6” reinforces some of the transcendental qualities found in “Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night.” Though Whitman does not fit within the parameters of the transcendental movement, he does share those writers’ interest in creating a generative link between nature and humanity.
"Song of Myself, 49 [And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me]" by Walt Whitman (1855)
“Song of Myself, 49” illustrates Whitman’s attitude toward death, but in a more personal way than in “Vigil Strange.
By Walt Whitman
A Glimpse
Walt Whitman
America
Walt Whitman
A Noiseless Patient Spider
Walt Whitman
Are you the new person drawn toward me?
Walt Whitman
As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days
Walt Whitman
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Walt Whitman
For You O Democracy
Walt Whitman
Hours Continuing Long
Walt Whitman
I Hear America Singing
Walt Whitman
I Sing the Body Electric
Walt Whitman
I Sit and Look Out
Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman
O Captain! My Captain!
Walt Whitman
Song of Myself
Walt Whitman
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
Walt Whitman
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
Walt Whitman