what does this?

Question

when lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd by walt whitman

poem mean????? please help i dont understand any of it?

Answer 1

You can get a good analysis from spark-notes. However you cant access the link, I have pasted part of it here for you:

Commentary
"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" is composed of three separate yet simultaneous poems. One follows the progress of Lincoln's coffin on its way to the president's burial. The second stays with the poet and his sprig of lilac, meant to be laid on the coffin in tribute, as he ruminates on death and mourning. The third uses the symbols of a bird and a star to develop an idea of a nature sympathetic to yet separate from humanity. The progression of the coffin is followed by a sad irony. Mourners, dressed in black and holding offerings of flowers, turn out in the streets to see Lincoln's corpse pass by. The Civil War is raging, though, and many of these people have surely lost loved ones of their own. Yet their losses are subsumed in a greater national tragedy, which in its publicness and in the fact that this poem is being written as part of the mourning process, is set up to be a far greater loss than that of their own family members. In this way the poem implicitly asks the question, "What is the worth of a man? Are some men worth more than others?" The poet's eventual inability to mourn, and the depictions of anonymous death on the battlefields, suggest that something is wrong here.
The poet vacillates on the nature of symbolic mourning. At times he seems to see his offering of the lilac blossom as being symbolically given to all the dead; at other moments he sees it as futile, merely a broken twig. He wonders how best to do honor to the dead, asking how he would decorate the tomb. He suggests that he would fill it with portraits of everyday life and everyday men. This is a far cry from the classical statuary and elaborate floral arrangements usually associated with tombs. The language in the poem follows a similar shift. In the first stanzas the language is formal and at times even archaic, filled with exhortations and rhetorical devices. By the end much of the ceremoniousness has been stripped away; the poet offers only "lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of [his] soul." Eventually the poet simply leaves behind the sprig of lilac, and "cease[s] from [his] song," still unsure of just how to mourn properly.
The final image of the poem is of "the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim." All has been worked through save nature, which remains separate and beyond. The death-song of the bird expresses an understanding and a beauty that Whitman, even while he incorporates it into his poem, cannot quite master for himself. Unlike the pastoral elegies of old, which use a temporary rift with nature to comment on modernity, this one shows a profound and permanent disconnection between the human and natural worlds. "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" mourns for Lincoln in a way that is all the more profound for seeing the president's death as only a smaller, albeit highly symbolic, tragedy in the midst of a world of confusion and sadness.

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Answer 2

This is an epic poem that evades scrutiny in one small paragraph. Start with the link to Wikipedia for starters (below).
Clues are available. Whitman saw 4 years of nursing wounded soldiers and seeing them die. In his heart was a great sorrow. He wept for the men and he wept for democracy that died a death in this country. Our innocence was lost.
Lincoln's assassination was another loss of innocence. He was a defender of democracy. In some ways Lincoln's death was the death of democracy.
Whitman feels his own personal death approaching, but democracy itself was dying in the Industrial mechanized age. Everything he worked for and hoped for was being carried like a coffin to its grave.
These are only clues but Whitman is a true inspiration. Read his Leaves of Grass to feel his youthfulness. Then you may sense his growing acquaintance with death.
Freesongs