Song of myself A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt, Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose? Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.

The work was an attempt at reaching out to the common person with an American epic. By May 1 Whitman received a promotion to a slightly higher clerkship and publiWalt Whitmand Drum-Taps. Another possible lover was Bill Duckett.

His poetry presented an egalitarian view of the races and at one point he called for the abolition of slavery but later he saw the abolitionist movement as a threat to democracy. Walter "Walt" Whitman (May 31 1819 – March 26 1892) was an American poet essayist and journalist. Whitman's major work Leaves of Grass was first publiWalt Whitmand in 1855 with his own money.