When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloom D Analysis

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In the poem, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” by Walt Whitman, He interrupts the rest of the poem for his bird to belt out a song, a song about death. The speaker of the poem was charmed by the song. Whitman uses this poem to push across a new, unmentioned image of death as the “dark mother always gliding near with soft feet.” Before this point in the poem, Death has been this figure that we cover with images of life, that we separate from ourselves by reminding ourselves that life prevails through death. In our American culture, the figure of death is something that we paint in darkness, we give Him a scythe and paint an image of destruction following his path. During funerals, the pinnacle of our reminder of death, we wear black, we mourn and we prepare the bodies to make them look alive yet asleep. Any disfigurations are taken care of and painted over like a doll. When it comes time to put the bodies in the ground, we all leave before they return to the earth so as not to …show more content…

He shows himself holding hands with death on either side, the “knowledge of death” on one side and “the thought of death” on the other. The mood is not serious, nor is it laughing, but understanding and relaxed. This closeness with death is something that we lack in our culture; Death is closing in on either side of us and we can do nothing to stop Him taking us. But Waltman isn’t pushing us to fear Death more than we already do, he pushes us to celebrate it, to “chant for [Death] the fullest welcome... glorify [Death] above all.” He indirectly argues that death is not some mysterious, shrouded figure that is evil and takes who he likes. The description received is that death is more like a swamp thrush that sings his song for each and everyone of his friends. When our time has come, the world hears our song and remembers with joy our personality and our friendships and our relationships and our quirks and our laughter and our

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