"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed"

“WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE DOORYARD BLOOM’D”

an elegy for Abraham Lincoln

(title, metaphors and images recycled from  poem by Walt Whitman, with the same name, and supplemented with words from President Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address.
Song fragments from "Green Grow the Lilacs" and from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic")   

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed

And the mournful sound of the train

Passed slowly over the corn-mantle on hills and valleys,

The towns were draped in black.

We heard the song of the grey-brown bird, 

Calling to us; asking us to tend the healing of our land;

“that a government of the people, by the people and for the people should not perish

From the earth”.

The compassionate eyes in the craggy face 

Look outward, 

And he holds the law with both of his large hands.

We stand on the marble steps, looking upward, open-mouthed,

And hear the spare song he is singing.  

“With malice toward none, with charity for all…”

The heart-shaped green leaves of the lilacs

As we drape them over this dark coffin, 

Carry with them our own hearts’ hopes.

“Let us strive on to finish the work we are in, 

To bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle

and for his widow and his orphan…”

The perfume of the lilacs, as intense as it is, 

Fills the dusty air, and makes the train whistle more like a dirge.

“To form a just and lasting peace”…

(BOOM BOOM BOOM,  SHHHHH, BOOM! Whoo-woo!) 

“All men are created equal.”

The ever-returning spring brings the flood of the lilac perfume

Through the open windows of the town,

Through the farms and offices and stores,

Through the lives of the women and men, remembering 

The song of the grey-brown bird…  

“Among ourselves and with all nations”.

( here we sing Green Grow the lilacs)

“Green grow the lilacs all sparkling with dew,

I’m lonely my darling since parting with you;

And by our next meeting I hope to prove true

And change the green lilacs to the red, white and blue”.

In the ever-returning spring, as the green corn ripens

And raises those eager shafts toward sunlight, blanketing the valleys,

And the ever-stronger whisper and roar of the traffic on the highways

Drowns out the small birds’ songs,

Let us hear again the light spare song of that grey-brown bird;

Singing of the law,

(In your courts, oh Lord, in your temple)

(here we sing The Battle Hymn of the Republic, especially the 3rd verse…)

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored…

I have seen him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps,

They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps,
I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,

Hist truth is marching on!

He is sounding forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat,

He is sifting out the hearts of men before the judgement seat,

Oh be swift my soul to answer him, be jubilant my feet…”

The grey-brown bird of these measured and spare cathedrals, singing

The words of our laws;

The mind of steel like a lonely star, enduring the howled abuse by less wise men,

As he spoke to the better angels of our nation,

Let us not forget.  Though the song comes from the solitary thrush, 

Let us continue to pray to remember; 

Through all these losses and the bare ruined winter branches,

When the lilacs bloom again,

When the voice of the dove is heard in the land,

We will remember. 

And with those better angels, rise to sing

With the grey-brown bird who was the best of all our songbirds.  

mn2016