Walt Whitman

I will start off by saying that as an English major I have read poetry before, but without the professors help I would not have known half of the meaning of most poems. I read through When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd and understood some of it, but not the deeper meaning. As in a lot of his work nature is a major character in this poem. I believe that his major theme is that even though everyone will die they should still enjoy life to the fullest. When he was walking with "the knowledge of death" and "the thought of death" he still was able to enjoy the bird's song (p. 164). It is not something that I would read again. I also read The Dalliance of the Eagles. I think this poem could have been a problem for readers of Whitman's time because it describes the mating of eagles. I liked how he described them as "a living, fierce, gyrating wheel" (p. 154). If I did not have an idea how eagles mated that would have given me a picture in my head of what it looked like. I enjoyed this poem.