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:
1. "What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life."
No matter how much of the world that has been seen and discovered, what distinguishes us as a human being from one another is how we see what we have discovered.
2. "We were together. I forget the rest."
So what if you didn't live the life of a story, or got the chance to turn your life into a story? The real story lies in the people you have filled your life with, and come to cherish above the most endearing of tales ever told.
3. "Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it by yourself. It is not far. It is within reach. Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. Perhaps it is everywhere - on water and land."
Only you can determine, and discover who you are. Only you can know you even when you don't know. Only you can be you even when you aren't. It's you even if it isn't.
4. "Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you."
You find who you are. You will. No matter how many times you elude yourself. No matter how much you change. Somewhere out there is you, waiting for you.
5. "Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you."
Everyone has a past. Filled with mistakes, filled with sorrow. But through the tears, and the guilt, we remain so we can move on, and so on we go. Even if it means putting what happened yesterday in the rearview, and as we use time to build distance, into the distance we pass our pain.
Although Whitman as long passed out of time, along with his sonorous voice that was the breath which conceived many to take faith in who they were, and what they could be, the notes of his melody remain, bound within pages of books filling libraries and bookstores. The very place where resides the solace of what we were, what we are, and what we can, and will become.
