Abstract
ERS of American literature are almost unanimous in their admiration for Whitman's When Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd. It is to many the greatest American elegy, yet, surprisingly, the poem has had few comprehensive readings.' There is a general sense that Lilacs works as what Kenneth Burke would call a symbolic action, that it gets something crucial done for the poet and perhaps for his readers.2 But what precisely does Lilacs do, and
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