Whitman’s poetic genius could not be for himself alone. His deeper gifts revealed themselves when put in the service of the times and of the greatest need. Having been put in the service of humanity, his gift was ennobled, transformed. His words helped turn the dark wound of the Civil War into a kind of transcendent light. Whitman had developed an expansive consciousness that saw into the meaning of things. This is, after all, what a poet does. He had infused his poetic spirit into his “missionary” work in the hospitals. He had turned his life into a poem—a work of art—in the most unlikely of
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