A great poet is one of undaunted courage and belief in the expansion of his creative powers. Milton had been blind for six years when lie began lo write his masterpiece paradise lost. On this great epic he toiled in darkness for five or six years, sustained by his belief that his epic was greater than Homer's Iliad, that it would be read as long as the English language would be read or spoken. One …showed first 75 words of 350 total…

…showed last 75 words of 350 total…mysterious passages in Leaves of Grass than in any other great book of poems written in England or America. Whitman writes in language close to our own speech of everyday, as the first poem in this volume shows. The poet seeks to define those words that each of us searches to comprehend. What is happiness? What is joy? What is hope? What is a son, a daughter, a brother? What is beauty? What is justice?