When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd Analysis

Good ol' Walt Whitman is kind of the granddaddy of free verse, Shmoopers. He lets us know that too, just by having the occasional super-long line that just can't be fit into one line alone. It's so...

Our speaker of "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" sounds like Whitman's go-to universalized "I" first-person voice. By "universalized," we mean that, although the speaker uses the word "I,"...

Suffice it to say that our setting in "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" covers pretty much… the entire landscape of America. That's totally Walt, for you. Not for nothing is he knows as...

"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" isn't your typical nineteenth-century elegy. By virtue of free verse alone, Whitman's poem sounds fluid and open as one line often spills into the next (a...

In nineteenth-century poetry, poems often use the first line for the title, and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" does just that. Still, the title is mighty important in ways beyond that c...

You know you're dealing with Walt Whitman when you see a lot of first-person point of view that sounds as if the speaker isn't just talking about himself. If the "I" is being used more as a "we," t...

Whitman isn't the kind of poet who likes to throw a bunch of fancy words and philosophies into his work. He works with a simple, common language and tends to get mighty thorough in his explanations...

Did you know that some of Whitman's unhappiest times occurred not while serving the wounded of the Civil War, but while serving as a school teacher? (Source.)Note to all you budding writers: Whitma...

Whitman is known to get a bit racy at times (take a look at Leaves of Grass and you'll see what we mean). But his speaker of "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" is a bit too concerned about...