Walt Whitman (1819–1892) is perhaps the most distinctly American of the early U.S. poets. Alive and sprawling, Whitman’s poems are unorthodox and fiercely democratic. His vision of freedom is well-articulated in the 1855 introduction of Leaves of Grass, where he writes: “This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, reexamine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.” Whitman’s work continues to be a major influence in the U.S. and abroad, exemplifying the inextricability of content and form. As Whitman wrote in his poem “So Long!” … “Camerado, this is no book, / Who touches this touches a man, / (Is it night? are we here together alone?) / It is I you hold and who holds you, / I spring from the pages into your arms—decease calls me forth.”