cur sequentially. But Whitman was intent on stretching the limits of the
poetic medium by creating an illusion of synchronicity and simultaneity—a
sort of “counterpoint ” between the buoyant “thought of death” in sec-
tion 14 and the grim “knowledge of death” in section 15. The overlay of
contrasting events and moods in the two sections highlights the contra-
dictions and the complexity of the persona’s recollections and the inten-
sity of his warring feelings of horror, despair, hope and elation in regard
to death. Section 15 clearly explains that the persona has experienced the
exultation of the bird’s song “while” (i.e., at the same time as) he beholds
“askant ” (or from the corner of his eye) a grim, “long procession of vi-
sions” of the war in which death appears not as the embracing mother but
as an agent of random and merciless slaughter.
In section 6 of “Song of Myself ” the persona had proclaimed his faith
that the dead who lie beneath the grass “are alive and well somewhere”;
but “Lilacs” avoids such an explicit statement concerning the destinies of
those who died in the war. Nevertheless, Whitman was aware that post-
war America needed words that could promote closure and reconcilia-
tion. The Methodist bishop who conducted the funeral service at Lin-
coln’s tomb pronounced that very message: Lincoln’s iconic body, he
declared, had traversed the land on its awesome journey on a mission of
reconciliation. Pleading for unity in an hour when the nation was still
stunned by tragedy, the clergyman observed, “far more eyes have looked
upon [the visage of ] the departed [president] than ever looked upon the
face of any other departed man.... The deepest affections of our hearts
gather around some human form, in which are incarnated the living
thoughts and ideas of a passing age.” Lincoln’s funerary journey, the
bishop concluded, had served as a symbol to unify the nation.^99 “Lilacs”
was intended to serve a similar purpose—to memorialize the war and its
fallen, to personalize the nation’s grief, and to honor the deceased presi-
dent as an icon of national unity. Hence, following its grim details, sec-
tion 15 ends with the consolatory message that death has immunized the
war’s dead from further suffering:
But I saw they were not as was thought,
They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer’d not,
The living remain’d and suffer’d, the mother suffer’d,
And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer’d,
And the armies that remain’d suffer’d.204 / “Come Sweet Death!”