Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass
Walter Whitman (1819-1892) was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist. He was a part of the transition between Transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse.
Born on Long Island, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk, and a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War in addition to publishing his poetry. Early in his career, he also produced a temperance novel, Franklin Evans (1842).
After working as clerk, teacher, journalist and laborer, Whitman wrote his masterpiece, Leaves of Grass, pioneering free verse poetry in a humanistic celebration of humanity, in 1855. Emerson, whom Whitman revered, said of Leaves of Grass that it held "incomparable things incomparably said." During the Civil War, Whitman worked as an army nurse, later writing Drum Taps (1865) and Memoranda During the War (1867). His health compromised by the experience, he was given work at the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C. After a stroke in 1873, which left him partially paralyzed, Whitman lived his next 20 years with his brother, writing mainly prose, such as Democratic Vistas (1870). Leaves of Grass was published in nine editions, with Whitman elaborating on it in each successive edition. In 1881, the book had the compliment of being banned by the commonwealth of Massachusetts on charges of immorality. A good friend of Robert Ingersoll, Whitman was at most a Deist who scorned religion. D. 1892.
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“This is what you should do:Love the earth and sun and animals,Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,Stand up for the stupid and crazy,Devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants,Argue not concerning God,Have patience and indulgence toward the people...Reexamine all you have been told in school or church or in any book,Dismiss what insults your very soul,And your flesh shall become a great poem.”
“Passing stranger! You do not know how longingly I look upon you,You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me, as of a dream,)I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,You grew up with me, were a boy with me, or a girl with me,I ate with you, and slept with you—your body has become not yours only, nor left my body mine only,You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass—you take of my back, breast, hands, in return,I am not to speak to you—I am to think of you when I sit alone, or wake at night alone,I am to wait—I do not doubt I am to meet you again,I am to see to it that I do not lose you.”