Synopses & Reviews
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,
And the great star early droop'd in the Western sky in the night,
I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Bloomsbury Poetry Classics are selections from the work of some of our greatest poets. The series is aimed at the general reader rather than the specialist and carries no critical or explanatory apparatus. This can be found elsewhere. In the series the poems introduce themselves, on an uncluttered page and in a format that is both attractive and convenient. The selections have been made by the distinguished poet, critic, and biographer Ian Hamilton.
About the Author
Walt Whitman was born in 1819. He worked as a journalist and newspaper editor for many years before the appearance of his
Leaves of Grass in 1855. First acclaimed in England, Whitman's "liquid, billowy waves" of unrhymed, unmetered verse have been deeply influential in the shaping of modern American poetics. During the Civil War, Whitman worked as an "unofficial nurse," tending the wounded of both sides in army hospitals. He suffered a stroke in 1873, and thereafter lived in semiretirement in Camden, New Jersey, until his death in 1892.