Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist born on Long Island, New York. His most famous work is the collection of poetry, Leaves of Grass.

Walt Whitman ( 1819 – 1892)

During the American Civil War, Whitman cared for wounded soldiers in and around Washington, D.C. He often saw Abraham Lincoln in his travels around the city, and came to greatly admire the President. Whitman's poems "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed" were influenced by his profound grief after Lincoln's assassination in 1865.

Whitman died on March 26, 1892, and was buried in Camden's Harleigh Cemetery, in a simple tomb of his own design. A dedication to Whitman is carved on the side of a rock face at Bon Echo Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada. The inscription is the following excerpt from one of his poems.

My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite;

I laugh at what you call dissolution;

And I know the amplitude of time.