The poem cadences in Leaves of Grass are Biblically based.
Whitman grew up in New York in a Quaker family that struggled economically, making for a tense and uncomfortable childhood. He left school at age 11 to work and help provide for his family, becoming an apprentice at Patriot, a Long Island newspaper. He continued working for papers and as a teacher, and published his first poem as a teen. He wrote serialized novels and self-help guides, too. The poem cadences in Leaves of Grass are Biblically based. You can read Walt Whitman’s work in the books The Complete Poems of Walt Whitman and Leaves of Grass, available from publisher Penguin Random House.