In the summer of 1865, Whitman's friend, John Burroughs (1837–1921), an aspiring nature writer, had returned to Washington to his position at the Treasury department after a long vacation in the woods.
Burroughs recalled that Whitman had been "deeply interested in what I tell him of the hermit thrush, and he says he largely used the information I have given him in one of his principal poems".
Burroughs described the song as "the finest sound in nature...perhaps more of an evening than a morning hymn...a voice of that calm, sweet solemnity one attains to in his best moments."
Whitman took copious notes of his conversations with Burroughs on the subject, writing of the hermit thrush that it "sings oftener after sundown...is very secluded...likes shaded, dark places...His song is a hymn...in swamps—is very shy...never sings near the farm houses—never in the settlement—is the bird of the solemn primal woods & of Nature pure & holy."
Burroughs published an essay in May 1865 in which he described the hermit thrush as "quite a rare bird, of very shy and secluded habits" found "only in the deepest and most remote forests, usually in damp and swampy localities".
Loving notes that the hermit thrush was "a common bird on Whitman's native Long Island" Biographer Justin Kaplan draws a connection between Whitman's notes and the lines in the poem:
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The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,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. (
lines 18–22)
According to Reynolds, Whitman's first-person narrator describes himself as "me powerless-O helpless soul of me" and identifies with the hermit thrush a "'shy and hidden bird' singing of death with a "bleeding throat'".
The hermit thrush is seen as an intentional alter ego for Whitman, and its song as the "source of the poet's insight."
Miller writes that "The hermit thrush is an American bird, and Whitman made it his own in his Lincoln elegy.
We might even take the 'dry grass singing' as an oblique allusion to Leaves of Grass."

Scholar James Edwin Miller states that  "Whitman's hermit thrush becomes the source of his reconciliation to Lincoln's death, to all death, as the "strong deliveress" Killingsworth writes that "the poet retreats to the swamp to mourn the death of the beloved president to the strains of the solitary hermit thrush singing in the dark pines...the sacred places resonate with the mood of the poet, they offer renewal and revived inspiration, they return him to the rhythms of the earth with tides" and replaces the sense of time.
In the summer of 1865, Whitman's friend, John Burroughs (1837–1921), an aspiring nature writer, had returned to Washington to his position at the Treasury department after a long vacation in the woods. Burroughs recalled that Whitman had been "deeply interested in what I tell him of the hermit thrush, and he says he largely used the information I have given him in one of his principal poems". Burroughs described the song as "the finest sound in nature...perhaps more of an evening than a morning hymn...a voice of that calm, sweet solemnity one attains to in his best moments." Whitman took copious notes of his conversations with Burroughs on the subject, writing of the hermit thrush that it "sings oftener after sundown...is very secluded...likes shaded, dark places...His song is a hymn...in swamps—is very shy...never sings near the farm houses—never in the settlement—is the bird of the solemn primal woods & of Nature pure & holy." Burroughs published an essay in May 1865 in which he described the hermit thrush as "quite a rare bird, of very shy and secluded habits" found "only in the deepest and most remote forests, usually in damp and swampy localities". Loving notes that the hermit thrush was "a common bird on Whitman's native Long Island" Biographer Justin Kaplan draws a connection between Whitman's notes and the lines in the poem:
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. (lines 18–22)
According to Reynolds, Whitman's first-person narrator describes himself as "me powerless-O helpless soul of me" and identifies with the hermit thrush a "'shy and hidden bird' singing of death with a "bleeding throat'". The hermit thrush is seen as an intentional alter ego for Whitman, and its song as the "source of the poet's insight." Miller writes that "The hermit thrush is an American bird, and Whitman made it his own in his Lincoln elegy. We might even take the 'dry grass singing' as an oblique allusion to Leaves of Grass."
Scholar James Edwin Miller states that  "Whitman's hermit thrush becomes the source of his reconciliation to Lincoln's death, to all death, as the "strong deliveress" Killingsworth writes that "the poet retreats to the swamp to mourn the death of the beloved president to the strains of the solitary hermit thrush singing in the dark pines...the sacred places resonate with the mood of the poet, they offer renewal and revived inspiration, they return him to the rhythms of the earth with tides" and replaces the sense of time.
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd