After the war, he held secretarial jobs to support himself, and lost one such job when his employer's scandalized eye fell upon the Leaves. In the old age, a semi-invalid after a stroke, Whitman made his home in Camden, New Jersey. Before he died, he saw his work finally winning respect and world wide acceptance. .
Whitman's influence on later American poetry has been profound, both by the examples of his open forms and by his bold encompassing of subject matter that had formerly been considered unpoetic. Many of his four hundred poems contain musical terms, names of instruments, and names of composers. He insisted that music was "greater than wealth, greater than buildings, ships, religions, paintings." In his final essay written one year before his death in 1891, he sums up his struggles of thirty years to write Leaves of Grass. The opening paragraph of his self-evaluation "A Backward Glance O"er Travel"d Road", begins with his reminiscences of "the best of songs heard". His concluding comments again return to thoughts about music, saying that "the strongest and sweetest songs remain yet to be sung". "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed" and "O Captain! My Captain!" (1866) are two of his more famous poems. A poet who ardently singing on life and himself, Whitman is today claimed a!.
s one the few truly great American men of letters. .
I SAW IN LOUISIANA A LIVE-OAK GROWING (1867).
I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,.
All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,.
Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark .
green,.
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself,.
But I wonder"d how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there .
without its friend near, for I knew I could not,.
And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and .
twined around it a little moss,.
And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my room,.