Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven,
As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses,
Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,
I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring.
—Walt Whitman
An excerpt from Walt Whitman’s elegy to President Abraham Lincoln. It was in the summer of 1865 during a period of national mourning of the president’s assassination on April 14, 1865.
Deb Johnston 