This Dust Was Once the Man

"This Dust Was Once the Man" is an elegy published by Walt Whitman in 1871. The poem is dedicated to Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States]]. The poem was written shortly after Lincoln's assassination.

Whitman went on to write additional poetry about Lincoln: "O Captain! My Captain!", "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", and "Hush'd Be the Camps To-Day." All of these poems were included in Book XXII of Whitman's Leaves of Grass.

In music
The poem served as the setting for two choral works of Jeffrey Hoover.