When Lilacs Last in thd Dooryard Bloom'd

At times of overwhelming universal sadness, as we mourn the loss of so many lives in Sandy Hook, poetry sometimes captures things best:

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring, Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west, And thought of him I love....

Walt Whitman's poem, an elegy to President Lincoln, can be found in its entirety in many anthologies, and online at the Poetry Foundation.