Lilacs by Whitman

This poem was really hard for me to understand; I can't tell what kind of mood Whitman is in while he is writing this. I know the poem is about death, but his words are so beautiful that it is hard for me to see a dreary mood. But it also is hard for me to understand exactly what the words are saying! I think it is sad how we are not really accustomed to this kind of writing anymore. It really is beautiful and I wish I could comprehend it as easily as I can modern writing.

To try and understand it better, I read the blogs from my group to see what they had to say ;) A couple of them talked a lot about adding goodness to our lives to help with the bad; the goodness being lilacs. I do this pretty much all the time to buffer the negatives of my day; for instance, I ate a few pieces of chocolate at work today just to feel better after a long day :) But on a more serious note, how much more should I be relying on God to buffer the evil of the world? I am tempted to say that I wish God could simply eliminate the evil in the world, but I know there is evil for a reason. God didn't create it, no. Evil entered the world by our free will. But God, in His good grace, is able to manipulate (for lack of a better word) this evil that we produce and make it to work with His plans. "For we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose." This doesn't mean things are always going to look good, but that's where faith comes in that God is the one who knows what He is doing!