Do I contradict myself?  Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large--I contain multitudes.

A writer can do nothing for people more necessary, satisfying, than
just simply to reveal to them the infinite possibility of their own souls.

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There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

O Me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless--of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light--of the objects mean--of the struggle ever renew’d;
Of the poor results of all--of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest--with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring--What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here--that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, not look through
the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books. You shall not look
through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
you shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

Born in Huntington on Long Island, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk, and--in addition to publishing his poetry--was a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War. Early in his career, he also produced a temperance novel, Franklin Evans (1842). Whitman's major work, Leaves of Grass, was first published in 1855 with his own money.  The work was an attempt at reaching out to the common person with an American epic.  He continued expanding and revising it until his death in 1892.  After a stroke towards the end of his life, he moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declined.  He died at age 72 and his funeral became a public spectacle.

Whitman was concerned with politics throughout his life.  He supported the Wilmot Proviso and opposed the extension of slavery generally.  His poetry presented an egalitarian view of the races, though his attitude in life reflected many of the racial prejudices common to nineteenth-century America and his opposition to slavery was not necessarily based on belief in the equality of races per se.  At one point he called for the abolition of slavery, but later he saw the abolitionist movement as a threat to democracy.