#When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd

[culturevulturette]

From When the Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d 

Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty, The violet and purple morn with just felt breezes, The gentle soft-born measureless light, The miracles spreading bathing all, the fullfill’d noon, The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars, Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land. Sing on, sing on, you gray-brown bird, Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes, Limitless out of dusk, out of the cedars and pines. Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song, Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.

Walt Whitman

[postmodernismruinedme]

"Prais'd be the fathomless universe."

Walt Whitman, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd

[petaltexturedskies]

In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings, stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green, with many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love, with every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard, with delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green, a sprig with its flower I break.

Walt Whitman, from "When Lilacs Last in The Dooryard Bloom'd" in Leaves of Grass

[thetableintheback]

blue eyes crying in the rain - willie nelson / winds change - orville peck / this is the last time - keane / dance macabre - ghost / hostages - the howl and the hum / ode to the whitman line "when lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd - kimiko hahn

[When we kissed goodbye and parted/I knew we'd never meet again.

Lost my way on the other side/I know why, I don't know when/From the way that we said goodbye/I knew I'd never see you again.

This is the last time/That I will say these words/I remember the first time/The first of many lies.

How could it end like this?/There's a sting in the way you kiss me/Something within your eyes said it could be the last time.

This is how we die/ Become just you and I/You turn round and smile/One final time.

so tell me finally, is last as in the last time or to make something last]

[tortoisesshells]

2023 year in review fic writer asks: 1, 4, 18. and 26! <3

What’s something new that you tried in a fic this year? How did it turn out and would you do it again?

There's a scrapped version of chapter 30 of Customs and Duties where Nellie and Norrington fucked, which required a not completely improbable sequence of events - and also Nellie (who has, while notably more impulsive when feeling cornered, been pretty aware of what constitutes her best interests) to risk getting (1) knocked up, (2) outside of marriage, (3) in Boston, in 1739, (4) to a man who still has the power of life and death over her if and when she ever fesses up to that time she accidentally caused the death of one of his officers and even if they're getting along very well - well. Annoyingly, even though that version of the chapter didn't make it to publication, there was some good characterization in there, chiefly: “– Or I will retaliate. You’re only human, too.” “I don’t think I am,” he said, and then, when she must have made a face, “I mean ticklish, Nellie.” That was easily tested, at least – and though she ought to have been pinning the bodice of her gown back together, and though (she reminded herself) she was too old and serious to be acting like a girl – she lunged, and got her hands under his still-untucked shirt before he could stop her. Not that he made a sincere effort at it: he was too busy schooling his expression into complete neutrality.

“I know you,” she huffed, after she could see him biting down his laughter, “Don’t put that on with me to prove a point.”

“You were saying I enjoy coming out the victor, earlier.” “You’re a marvel of nature. That which you do that should irritate me somehow becomes irritatingly endearing.”

4. What piece of media inspired you the most?

By sheer volume (and word count!), it was 1899 - I even did my first proper fic exchange for it! I suppose all that rage about it getting shitcanned for spurious reasons by Netflix was good for something.

18. What was the hardest fic to title?

I mostly wrote little ficlets this year, and those are always pretty easy to title for whatever reason; I think it's got to be labor, And the infinite separate houses - It was long, hefty, and I still have no clear feeling for titling things for Dark Shadows. I picked a quote from Whitman on a fairly tenuous association (main character associated with lilac perfume - gave her a lilac-embroidered kerchief as a fetch-quest - aha! "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"!). It wasn't perfect, but it did the job.

26. If you had to choose one, what was THE most satisfying writing moment of your year?

Truthfully, 2023 was more of a winter of discontents for writing, but I am genuinely happy with how ch. 29 of Customs turned out. The stargazing section may be my favorite thing I've written in a while!

End of Year Fic Writer Asks

[g0ghgetter]

words ive been thinking about lately

"history of man" - maisie peters

"when lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd" - walt whitman

"everything ends" - leith ross

dead poets society

"little beast" - richard siken, crush

[grandhotelabyss]

For someone who’s read some Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, but knows the American transcendentalists only secondhand, where would you recommend starting with Emerson et al?

Emerson is easy to start with because he's an essayist-lecturer, so you can just go straight to the most famous pieces, each of which, except perhaps the first, can be read in an hour or two: "Nature," "The Divinity School Address," "The American Scholar," "Self-Reliance," "The Poet," "Circles," "Experience." If you like those, there's plenty more to read around in, including his journals. I've read some of those essays countless times, but never Emerson systematically—nor does he recommend reading anything systematically.

With Thoreau, if you don't want to go straight to Walden—though I do recommend Walden—you could start with the shorter pieces that give a sense of his personality, his politics, his cultural critique, and his poetics of nature: "Resistance to Civil Government," "Life Without Principle," "Walking."

I know Margaret Fuller best from "The Great Lawsuit: Man vs. Men, Woman vs. Women," her visionary feminist testament later expanded into the book Woman in the Nineteenth Century. (I've read the essay and not the book version because, like most casual readers, I encountered her both as a student and later as a teacher in the Norton Anthology.)

And then Whitman, not strictly part of the movement but the poet and the poetics to whom and which it gives birth. With him, start with Song of Myself, probably the 1855 version, the Preface to Leaves of Grass, and his elegy for Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd."

The rest of the "et al." I myself know only secondhand, though the trajectory of Orestes Brownson from Transcendentalist progressive to Catholic reactionary is something I always meant to investigate more closely, as is the work of the Unitarian preacher William Ellery Channing, regarded as oracular by his contemporaries though not much read today.

[adrasteiax]

(...) the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green, With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love, With every leaf a miracle—(...)

Walt Whitman, from When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloom’d in “Leaves Of Grass”

[normallyparenthetical]

George Crumb - Apparition: Elegiac Songs and Vocalises Performed by Ellie Jarrett and Dr. Andrew Hudson

If tumblr only links the first song, the full playlist is here. Apparently today is the anniversary of Whitman’s birth.  I don’t know much Whitman, but his elegy for Lincoln, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, is one of my favourite poems. I recently became aware of this song cycle by Crumb “based on texts from” Lilacs, and decided to use the anniversary to listen to it for the first time.  As that designation suggests, it is by no means a setting of the (long) poem.  Instead, it concentrates on the poem’s evocation of the apparition of Death and the poet’s Carol of Death.  The work is atmospheric and intriguing, and I now want to track down a score to become more familiar.

[bazpitchs-violin]

when walt whitman said “and thought of him i love” honestly mood

[godzilla-reads]

Poems to Die in the Forest To

“The Garden” by Andrew Marvell

“The Singing Woman From the Wood’s Edge” by Edna St. Vincent Millay

“The Last Mowing” by Robert Frost

“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” by Walt Whitman

“If I Should Die” by Emily Dickinson

“Requiescat��� by Oscar Wilde

[familiarquotation]

so tell me finally, is last as in the last time or to make something last —to hold, to hold you, to memorize fast—

Kimiko Hahn, Ode to the Whitman Line “When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd”

[aaravos-riding-a-rumba]

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd but to the tune of my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.

[petaltexturedskies]

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, and the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

Walt Whitman, from "When Lilacs Last in The Dooryard Bloom'd" in Leaves of Grass

[caitrionavalmai]

My favourite poem~

“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd” - Walt Whitman

4

In the swamp in secluded recesses,

A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.

Solitary the thrush,

The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,

Sings by himself a song.

Song of the bleeding throat,

Death’s outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know,

If thou wast not granted to sing thou would’st surely die.)

[infiniterichesinalittleroom]

And dark our celebration was, For Death was sweet to us; By that I mean it filled our sacks so full We leaned atilt round moonlit corners of the town And sprinted on to doorways where we buzzed and rang And lit the pumpkin windows and held forth our hands To take the treasures of the time, The run again, my lovely thistle girls and I Gone old within a night yet young with them. How grand such Eves, how good such girls That they slowed pace for ancient boys like me Who could not give it up, stay at home, put by that holiday. I had to go, to lurch, to tap, to laugh, to walk at last All happy-tired home in cold wind blowing With the full-lit moon to wife and hearth and aunts Come by to wait for us: the crazy man and his wild pride Of maiden beasts. Long years ahead, dear girls, on nights like those, Do please drop by at dusk, come sit upon my stone And speak glad words To spirit gone but wishing to be still. With you when you go forth with your own children Thus to filch and prize and laugh at every door. No more. I stay. But save for me a single sweet, some Milky Way to munch Or bring a pumpkin cut and lit and place it so to warm my feet. Then on the path run, go! knowing that I'm not dead, For you are my head, my heart, my limbs, my blood set free; You are the me that is warm, I am the me that is cold, You are the me that is young, I old. But what of that!? Death's mean at all his Tricks, God, yes, But you the Treats Who run to beg my life and yours In all the Future's wild, delirious, dark But warm and living streets.

• Ray Bradbury’s poem And Dark Our Celebration Was collected in When Elephants Last In The Dooryard Bloomed