Lilacs for Abraham Lincoln

Walt Whitman's When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd is almost like a stream of consciousness of the narrator reflecting on Abraham Lincoln's death. At several points through the piece, a whole day passes by in one stanza. For instance, lines 93 through 98:
[Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty,
[The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes,
[The gentle soft-born mesaureless light,
[The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill'd noon,
[The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars,
[Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land."
The first three lines describe the morning, the third line transitions to afternoon, and the last two lines describe the evening and night. This technique gives the reader the impression that the narrator is lost deep in thought and sitting still enough to observe all changes in the daylight.
Though this poem is like a stream of consciousness, it also tells a story. This can be seen in the sprig of lilac that the narrator breaks off. At the funeral, the narrator lays this lilac on Lincoln's grave, which is described in the last line of the sixth section, "I give you my sprig of lilac". When describing Lincoln's funeral, Whitman also writes of the "silent sea of faces", expressing how Lincoln's life touched many people.
Throughout the poem Whitman not only writes about Lincoln's death, but he also includes the death of the soldiers in the civil war, as well as the idea of death itself. In this poem, the narrator speaks of how he "saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war, But I saw they were not as was thought, They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer'd not, The living remain'd and suffer'd." Whitman claims that those who died in the war actually benefitted, and that those who were left alive were the ones who suffered, making Death appear peaceful and appealing. Whitman also does this by personifying death. For example he writes, "Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me, And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me, And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of companions." He speaks of these elements of death as "companions" rather than something to be afraid of.