Whitman and Lincoln Essays

Whitman and Lincoln Essays Whitman and Lincoln Essay Whitman and Lincoln Essay The advantage of a brief speech at Gettysburg was that it stunned people.   In doing that, he captured their attention and so they took note of what was said.   The fact that the speech was brief meant that Lincoln had to be extremely careful with his word choice because his meaning had to be clear.   Both Lincoln and Jefferson knew that the phrase â€Å"We hold these truths to be self-evident,† was necessary for a government that was to be governed by the people.   The war in Lincoln’s day was fighting for the same principles as the on in Jefferson’s day. The first symbol on the poem When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom is â€Å"great star† which represents Abraham Lincoln who was a great star in American history.   The second symbol is the lilacs.   They bloom in the month of April and therefore, they will always symbolize the sadness and mourning of the assassination of President Lincoln.   The narrator will alway s be reminded of the assassination when the lilacs bloom.   Then the last is the birds that symbolize nature and how the assassination disrupted the natural order of what should happen in the world. The poem gives the impression of deep mourning and hope.   Whitman uses descriptive language.At first the bird seems to have a god’s eye view of the earth, and is embracing what it sees from above.   Then it detects death and the tone changes to one of deep sorrow. Whitman changed poetry forever by doing several things in his writing.   He told his poems in prose which became popular with many other poets.   He used odd symbolism dealt with topics were about things that people were not used to discussing in public before.   He spoke of prostitution, sexuality, and death in Victorian times. The grass symbolizes the common things that unite people.   Grass is something that is universal.   It grows all over the earth, and rejuvenates itself continually as people do. Song of Myself is a true democratic poem.   He shows that anyone and anything is fair game for subjects of poetry.   The poem is an American Epic where middle class working people of Whitman’ s day of all types of occupations are the subjests/