Born in 1819, Whitman wrote deeply moving work in the dramatic double aftermath of President Lincoln’s assassination in 1865 and the end of the American Civil War. Whitman revolutionised what American poetry could say, how it could look on the page and how it could sound in the reading ear.  Many poets since, on both sides of the Atlantic, including Gerard Manley Hopkins, Oscar Wilde and Pablo Neruda have found new solace for the spirit in this great voice.