That you are here-that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on and you will contribute a verse. Because grass grows in and around the graves, there is life after death . . . Celebrating the self, the human body and the soul, Perceiving divinity in nature and accepting death as reality, Obsessed romantically with the physical as well as the spiritual and Upholding the democratic ideals and accomplishments of America . . . Walt Whitman's poems are draped in poetic fancy and are eternal in their essence and beliefs. A collection of his poems, Leaves of Grass is a seminal work in the nineteenth century American poetry and continues to amass huge readership across generations.