markets of that city. On his return to Brooklyn in the fall of 1848, he founded an abolitionist newspaper, the "Brooklyn Freeman". Between 1848 and 1855 he developed the style of poetry that caught the attention of literary men such as Ralph Waldo Emerson. When the Whitman’s Leaves of Grass reached him as a gift in July 1855, the Dean of American Letters thanked him for "the wonderful gift" and said that he rubbed his eyes a little "to see if the sunbeam was no illusion." Walt Whitman had been unknown to Emerson prior to that occasion. The "sunbeam" that illuminated a great deal of Whitman's poetry was music. It was one of the major sources of his inspiration. 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, 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, "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 was deeply singing on life and himself, Whitman is today claimed as one of the few truly great American poets....
