I think I could turn and live with animals, they’re so placid and self-contain’d, I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, or to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one respectful or unhappy over the whole earth.

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.