WHen Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd PART DEUX

Once again, Walt Whitman is a very interesting writer. The lilac is used so much throughout the poem and as I read I so want to break the rules of "how to read a poem". I want to try to break the code, and figure out what the lilac symbolizes when instead I truly should just read and take in and admire the poem. How many of us started assuming all many different meanings for the lilac? I think many of us are guilty, I know everyone in my group started wondering what it truly meant. I know the rules say we should not try to read too much into the poem and I agree. Who is to say that the Whitman was not writing about a flower that he truly loved and that he happened to take notice of everywhere he went? Im not saying he didn't do that but I am saying that he must be a very interesting person to write about a flower in so much detail, but hey we all have our hobbies.

The literature reminds me of Job in some sort, I believe it is because of the poetic writing style as well as the images. I believe if you took a phrase or stanza from any point in this poem, one could paint a picture out of it, because of the supreme detail and imagery.

One of my favorite images and more gruesome lines from the poem is,

"I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,

And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,

I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war,

But I was they were not as was thought,

They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer'd not,"

I can just see a painting including all of these images portraying young men suffering at war for a cause, pride possibly?