Although Walt Whitman emerged on the American Literary scene as a novelist, publishing "Franklin Evans" in 1842, the narrative was written in support of the temperance movement to ban alcohol consumption in the United States. The native of West Hills, New York established a lasting legacy for his innovations in poetry.

As the father of free verse trademarked for applying aspects of the transcendental and realism movement into his works, Whitman is forever immortalized for his magnum opus "Leaves of Grass", a poem he revised from the time of its circulation in 1855 until his death in 1892. Controversial for sexual imagery deemed explicit for its time, "Leaves of Grass" today is regarded as one of the foundational works in the canon of American Poetry. Here are five of the most eloquent lines delivered by a man defined by nothing more, and was the very personification of eloquence: