"Lilacs"

"Lilacs"

When the scent of lilacs in door-yard bloomed,
they laid his body in a stranger's room.
Whitman, overcome with war's grief and pain,
spoke of men senseless to war and its shame.


When the scent of lilacs; their fragrance bloomed,
Confederates stacked guns on end by noon.
Then Booth, who still had his gun, shot Lincoln
as Southern folk seemed aloof to mention.


When the scent of lilacs, their fragrance loomed,
they carried his body, not yet entombed,
across the street. Mary wept at his feet.
Booth galloped away to make his retreat.

Then, North and South cried: “We want war no more;
only the scent of lilacs at our door!"

Walt Whitman wrote in one of his editions "A.L. buried April 19, 1865". Lincoln, shot by John Wilkes Boothe on Good Friday evening, April 14, 1865, at Ford's Theater , died the next morning, across the street in a boarding house. Lincoln had been able to enjoy only 5 days of peace since the Civil War's end before he was assassinated. Whitman wrote he and his mother were unable to eat the day they learned of Lincoln's death; they "each had a cup of coffee, but nothing to eat", so devastated were they over the news.