It avails not, time nor place--distance avails not, I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence, Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt, Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd, Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh'd, Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood yet was hurried, Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-stemm'd pipes of steamboats, I look'd.

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.