The comment and the controversy which have accumulated around his poems and himself center about two nodal points: one is the relatively obvious consideration of the objections to his poetic form, his subject matter, and his conduct, and the other--far more complex and subtle--is the statement and appraisal of his philosophy of life. Prejudice and ignorance have had altogether too much to say about Whitman's versification,--as they still have in connection with the freer verse forms of the present day. Two or three simple facts should be stated at the outset, by way of clearing the ground. His earliest poetry was written in conventional form; the form of "Leaves of Grass" was the result neither of laziness nor of inability to deal with the established measures. Throughout his work there are recurrent passages in regular rimed meter. "O Captain! My Captain!" (1865), "Ethiopia Saluting the Colors" (1870), and the song of "The Singer in the Prison" (1870) are deliberate resorts to the old ways. More likely to escape the attention are unlabeled bits scattered through poems in Whitman's usual manner. The opening of the "Song of the Broad-Axe" is in eight measures of trochaic tetrameter with a single rime--it sounds like Emerson's; and the first four lines of section 14 in "Walt Whitman," or the "Song of Myself," are iambic heptameters, a perfect stanza. Furthermore, he was not utterly alone in his generation. Similar experiments by some of his contemporaries are almost forgotten, because there was no vital relation between form and content; because there was nothing vital in them; but Whitman's rhythms survive because they are as alive as the wind in the tree tops.