Who have treated of man as the creature of politics, aggregates, rulers and
priests;
I, habitan of the Alleghanies, treating of him as he is in himself, in his own
rights,
Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom exhibited itself, (the great
pride of man in himself;)
Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to be,
I project the history of the future.

~ Walt Whitman

The American poet, Walt Whitman, led the life of a carpenter, nurse and writer. He taught at a country schoolhouse when he was just 15, contributed to the Democratic Review by 21 and travelled across the Western States when he was 30. 

During the Civil War, Whitman spent a lot of time in camps and hospitals, where he tended to the sick and disabled.  His time there made a great impact on him and let to several poems published under the title, “Drum Taps”.  His most famous volume is “Leaves of Grass”, published in 1856.

In addition to his life’s work, Whitman is a unique poet based on the fact that many of his pieces do not follow a standard measure.  A professor at the university of California was quoted as saying, “"Pupils who are accustomed to associate the idea of poetry with regular classic measure in rhyme, or in ten-syllabled blank verse or elastic hexameters, will commence these short and simple prose sentences with surprise, and will wonder how any number of them can form a poem. But let them read aloud with a mind in sympathy with the picture as it is displayed, and they will find by nature's unmistakable responses, that the author was a poet, and possessed the poet's incommunicable power to touch the heart."

Photo: Walt Whitman in 1891 (a year before his death), in Camden, New Jersey.