“When lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed,
And the great star early drooped in the western sky in the night,
I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.”

— Walt Whitman

Memories of President Lincoln, 1
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

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Walt Whitman 181

American poet, essayist and journalist 1819–1892

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“Tis night, and the landscape is lovely no more;
I mourn, but you woodlands I mourn not for you!
For spring is returning your charms to restore,
Perfumed with fresh fragrance and glittering with dew.
Nor yet for the ravage of winter I mourn,
Kind nature the embryo blossom shall save;
But when shall spring visit the mouldering urn?”

James Beattie (1735–1803) Scottish poet, moralist and philosopher

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“That night as I lay in bed, I thought of several things I could have said and mourned the fact that my wit usually bloomed late, peaking when it no longer mattered, during the solitary hours close to midnight.”

Siri Hustvedt (1955) novelist, essayist, poet

Source: The Blindfold

“Flow my tears, fall from your springs,
Exil'd for ever: let me mourn
Where night's black bird her sad infamy sings,
There let me live forlorn.”

John Dowland (1563–1626) English Renaissance composer, lutenist, and singer

"Flow my tears", line 1, The Second Book of Songs (1600).

“On soft Spring nights I'll stand in the yard under the stars - Something good will come out of all things yet - And it will be golden and eternal just like that - There's no need to say another word.”

Jack Kerouac book Big Sur

Source: Big Sur

“The meteor flag of England
Shall yet terrific burn,
Till danger's troubled night depart,
And the star of peace return.”

Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) British writer

Stanza 4
Ye Mariners of England http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/Classic%20Poems/Campbell/ye%20mariners_of_england.htm (1800)

“Flowers fade and fly, and flying fill the sky;
Their bloom departs, their perfume gone, yet who stands pitying by? …
Oh, let me sadly bury them beside these steps to-night! …
Farewell, dear flowers, for ever now, thus buried as 'twas best,
I have not yet divined when I with you shall sink to rest.
I who can bury flowers like this a laughing-stock shall be;
I cannot say in days to come what hands shall bury me.
See how when spring begins to fail each opening floweret fades;
So too there is a time of age and death for beauteous maids;
And when the fleeting spring is gone, and days of beauty o'er,
Flowers fall, and lovely maidens die, and both are known no more.”

Herbert Giles book A History of Chinese Literature

"The Hung Lou Mêng", p. 368
A History of Chinese Literature (1901)

“Bury the Great Duke
With an empire's lamentation;
Let us bury the Great Duke
To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation;
Mourning when their leaders fall,
Warriors carry the warrior's pall,
And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate

St. I
Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington (1852)

“Now that the lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Source: Collected Poems, 1909-1962

“I can’t feel a thing; All mournful petal storms are dancing inside the very private spring of my head.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

“Tonight the lilacs magnify
The easy passion, the ever-ready love
Of the lover that lies within us and we breathe

An odor evoking nothing, absolute.
We encounter in the dead middle of the night
The purple odor, the abundant bloom.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Change

“When lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed,And the great star early drooped in the western sky in the night,I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.”

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Walt Whitman 181

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“When lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed,
And the great star early drooped in the western sky in the night,
I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.”