Whitman was three, the family moved to Brook-
lyn, where his father speculated unsuccessfully in
real estate. Whitman attended school in Brook-
lyn for six years and then at the age of eleven
worked as an office boy in a legal firm. He
continued to educate himself by reading in the
library, including authors such as Sir Walter
Scott and James Fenimore Cooper, as well as
by attending Shakespeare plays, visiting muse-
ums, and attending lectures. In 1831 he became
an apprentice printer for theLong Island Patriot,
a newspaper in Brooklyn, and he soon began to
contribute his own articles. In 1833, he worked
for theLong Island Star. By the mid-1830s Whit-
man was a journeyman printer and compositor
for printing shops in New York City, but in 1836
he moved back to Long Island, and for five years
he taught school in various towns. During this
time he tried to start his own newspaper, theLong
Islander, but the venture failed within a year.
Whitman decided he was unsuited to teach-
ing, and in the 1840s he returned to journalism.
During the 1840s in Brooklyn, Whitman moved
in and out of editorial positions for an array
of newspapers, including theEvening Star.He
also began writing fiction, and about twenty
newspapers and magazines published his stories
between 1840 and 1845. He publishedFranklin
Evans; or, The Inebriate: A Tale of the Times,a
temperance novel, in 1842. In 1848 he traveled
outside the New York area for the first time,
making a three-month trip to New Orleans,
Louisiana.
In 1855, Whitman published the first edition
ofLeaves of Grass, containing twelve poems,
as financed by himself. Not many copies were
sold, and the book was ignored by reviewers.
However, Whitman wrote and published some
reviews himself and sent copies of the book to
established literary figures, including Ralph
Waldo Emerson, who replied with an enthusias-
tic endorsement of the poet’s work. Whitman
published a second edition ofLeaves of Grass
in 1856, adding many new poems. He was to go
on expanding his masterwork all his life, pub-
lishing the ninth edition in 1891, the year before
his death. ‘‘A Noiseless Patient Spider’’ first
appeared in the fifth edition, published in 1871.
In 1862, Whitman visited hospitals in Wash-
ington, D.C., comforting and caring for soldiers
wounded in the Civil War. Out of this experience
he wrote many poems, publishing them in 1865
in Drum-Taps(later incorporated intoLeaves
of Grass). One of Whitman’s greatest poems,
‘‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’’
(1865–1866), was written as a tribute to President
Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated in 1865.
In 1873, at the age of fifty-four, Whitman
suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed.
He moved from Washington to Camden, New
Jersey, where he lived the remainder of his life
and managed to recover some of his physical
strength. Whitman published a prose work,Speci-
men Days, in 1882. This book consists of various
jottings that he had written as far back as the
1860s, including from his experiences at hospitals
during the Civil War and from the times he spent
around Timber Creek in Camden, convalescing
after his stroke. Suffering from many accumulated
illnesses, Whitman died a world-renowned poet
on March 26, 1892, at his home in New Jersey.Poem Summary
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood
isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast
surrounding,Walt Whitman(National Archives and Records Administration.)
A Noiseless Patient Spider