National Poetry Month

After President Lincoln was assassinated (he died April 15th, 1865), the poet Walt Whitman composed an elegy, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed. Though it never mentions the president by name, the poem notes the procession of Lincoln's casket as it moved from Washington to his final resting place in Springfield, Illinois. The complete poem can be found here.

Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,
Amid lanes, and through old woods, (where lately the violets peep’d from the ground, spotting the gray debris;)
Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes—passing the endless grass;
Passing the yellow-spear’d wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprising;
Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards;
Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,
Night and day journeys a coffin.