"
This Dust Was Once the Man" is a brief
elegy written by
Walt Whitman in 1871. It was dedicated to
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th
president of the United States, whom Whitman
greatly admired. The poem was written six years after
Lincoln's assassination. Whitman had written three previous poems about Lincoln, all in 1865: "
O Captain! My Captain!", "
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", and "
Hush'd Be the Camps To-Day".