"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" is a long poem written by American poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892) as an elegy to President Abraham Lincoln. It was written in the summer of 1865 during a period of profound national mourning in the aftermath of the President's assassination on April 14 earlier that year.

Although Whitman did not consider the poem to be among his best works, it is compared in both effect and quality to several acclaimed works of English literature, including elegies such as John Milton's Lycidas (1637) and Percy Bysshe Shelley's Adonais (1821). To listen to these works, review the Poetry Panoply here on Just Listen.

“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”...we begin….