Some things never change.
Even after publishing Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman, one of America’s greatest poets couldn’t survive on a poet’s royalties.
He worked as a low-level Washington bureaucrat, as a clerk in the Indian Department. He often saw his big boss, Abraham Lincoln, walking up the streets of Washington, D.C.
Whitman was a loyal employee; his poem “Oh Captain, My Captain” was written in mourning for Lincoln after his assassination.
