When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd

(6) Tree Line

Whitman isn't the kind of poet who likes to throw a bunch of fancy words and philosophies into his work. He works with a simple, common language and tends to get mighty thorough in his explanations of key ideas. In other words, it's usually spelled out for us, like 1,000 times or more. So "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" gets a fairly easy rating, even though it dates back to those dark and dusty Civil War days—you dig?