"
Until the Civil War was half over, Whitman remained in Brooklyn,
patiently composing new poems for successive printings of his
book. Then he went to the front to care for a wounded brother,
and finally settled down in a Washington garret to spend his
strength as an army hospital nurse. He wrote "Drum Taps" and
other magnificent poems about the War, culminating in his
threnody on Lincoln's death, "When Lilacs last in the Dooryard
Bloomed." Swinburne called this "the most sonorous nocturn ever
chanted in the church of the world." After the war had ended,
Whitman stayed on in Washington as a government clerk, and saw
much of John Burroughs and W. D. O'Connor. John Hay was a staunch
friend. Some of the best known poets and critics of England and
the Continent now began to recognize his genius. But his health
had been permanently shattered by his heroic service as a nurse,
and in 1873 he suffered a paralytic stroke which forced him to
resign his position in Washington and remove to his brother's
home in Camden, New Jersey.
He was only fifty-four, but his best work was already done, and
his remaining years, until his death in 1892, were those of
patient and serene invalidism.
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