Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman lived from 1819 to 1892. He was one of ten children and

was born on New York's Long Island. He worked as a printer, teacher

and property speculator. In 1855 he published 13 poems in a collection

entitled Leaves of Grass. Over the years, Whitman published fresh

editions of this collection, the last one in 1892, each time adding

many more poems - eventually it would contain hundreds of poems and

some 10,500 lines, making Leaves of Grass the length of a good sized

novel.

Whitman set out in Leaves of Grass to write about himself, giving his

purpose as:

"a feeling or ambition to articulate and faithfully express in

literary or poetic form and uncompromisingly, my own physical,

emotional, moral, intellectual and aesthetic Personality, in the midst

of, and tallying, the momentous spirit and facts of its immediate

days, and of current America"

During the American Civil War (1861-1865) Whitman served as a nurse in

a military hospital, where he caught an infection that weakened him.

In 1873, Whitman moved to Camden in New Jersey (inland from Barnegat),

where he stayed until his death. Whitman published other books, but

his reputation rests almost wholly on Leaves of Grass.

About the poem

The date in the AQA Anthology is mistaken - this poem (according to

the Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Volume 16:

Early National Literature) was first published in The American in 1880

and reprinted in Harper's Monthly in 1881. By this time, Whitman was

settled in New Jersey, where Barnegat lies on the coast in what is

today called Ocean County. The title is also "corrected" to the

standard UK form - Whitman writes "Patroling" with one "l".

This poem comes from a section of Leaves of Grass called Sea Drift -

containing poems, inspired by the sea, which explore the mysteries of

life and death. It contains two of the most famous of all Whitman's

lyrics - Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking and As I Ebb'd with the