Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 71-73
O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?
And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone?
And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love?
- By Section 10, we see the speaker trying to "warble" his own song. The hermit-bird have has his own song and now the speaker needs his own in this time of grieving.
- The successive rhetorical questions add to the speaker's struggle to put his grieving into words. He can only ask these questions without expecting any real answers.
- At this point we've come to the part of the elegy where the speaker is searching for a way to verbalize his grief into something more substantial. We've gone through the mourning portion with the funeral processions and now it's time to make sense of it all through words or "song."
- To paraphrase those questions, the speaker's wondering 1) how he can "sing" with life's passion for Lincoln, 2) how can he decorate ("deck"), or craft, that song so that it's worthy of Lincoln's "sweet soul," and 3) how he might make Lincoln's death bearable (adding "perfume" to the grave).
- Still, we notice in line 72 that the speaker feels as if there aren't enough words to "deck" his song for such a "large sweet soul" like Lincoln. After all, the guy was a national hero, so finding the right words would likely prove to be quite the feat.
- But, hey, you're the one reading the poem, Shmoopers. You be the judge: how's Walt doing with his "song" so far?
Lines 74-77
Sea-winds blown from east and west,
Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till there on the prairies
meeting,
These and with these and the breath of my chant,
I'll perfume the grave of him I love.
- But by line 74 the speaker figured it out. He'll use a "perfume" with sea winds from east and west, peppered with the "breath of [his] chant." Man—that's a pretty special perfume.
- So even this perfume has a sense of unity to it since it knows no boundaries between east and west and the prairies in between. It makes sense then that the speaker would bust out this perfume to honor the grave of the guy who was also all about unity and breaking down boundaries.
- We also sense some power behind those winds since the speaker repeats the word "blows." So the powerful winds complement the powerful man, who's now departed but whose memory and influence the speaker is trying to honor with his "chant" (i.e., this very poem).