•His friend Dr. Maurice Bucke
called this “the Christ likeness” in which the poet as
seer begins to emerge.
•In Leaves of Grass, Whitman
would write, “I am the man, I suffer’d, I was there.”
In a section of
Song of Myself
All this I
swallow and it tastes good . . . . I like it well, and it becomes mine,
I am the man . . . . I
suffered . . . . I was there.
I am the hounded
slave, I wince at the bite of dogs . . .
He tells of the
massacre at Goliad and of other battles.
