Walt Whitman didn't really go into death completely. During the civil war he would write very vivid poems about certain events. Things like the bloody battle for Gettysburg, or else he would use his poetry to show his feelings towards events in the war.
The poem below is a perfect example of things that Whitman wrote up during the course of the Civil War.
After certain disastrous campaigns,
Answer me, year of
repulses!
How will the poets,
of ages hence, look back to you,
& to me also?
What themes will they make out of
you, O year? (themes for ironical sarcastic
laughter?)
What are the proofs to
be finally shown
with pride, by bards descended of
from me? my children?
Are they really failures?
are they sterile, incompetent yieldings after all?
Are they not indeed to be
victorious shouts from my
children?
It it believed that the poem was written in 1862, and the disastrous campaigns were from Major General McClellan, who was once again defeated by General Robert E. Lee. Many other poems like this were also written. He also used very vivid imagery in his words to describe what he was writing about.
There was one big thing that Whitman did write his poetry about though, and that was on his homosexual orientation. A good example of his writings on the subject would be "Scented Herbage of my Breast". In this long poem he talks about his sexual identity.
"Scented Herbage of My Breast"
SCENTED herbage of my breast,
Leaves from you I yield, I write, to be perused best afterwards,
Tomb-leaves, body-leaves, growing up above me, above death,
Perennial roots, tall leaves—O the winter shall not freeze you, delicate leaves,
Every year shall you bloom again—out from where you retired, you shall emerge again;
O I do not know whether many, passing by, will discover you, or inhale your faint
odor—but
I
believe a few will;
O slender leaves! O blossoms of my blood! I permit you to tell, in your own way, of the
heart
that
is under you;
O burning and throbbing—surely all will one day be accomplish’d;
O I do not know what you mean, there underneath yourselves—you are not happiness,
You are often more bitter than I can bear—you burn and sting me,
Yet you are very beautiful to me, you faint-tinged roots—you make me think of Death,
Death is beautiful from you—(what indeed is finally beautiful, except Death and
Love?)
—O I think it is not for life I am chanting here my chant of lovers—I think it
must
be for
Death,
For how calm, how solemn it grows, to ascend to the atmosphere of lovers,
Death or life I am then indifferent—my Soul declines to prefer,
I am not sure but the high Soul of lovers welcomes death most;
Indeed, O Death, I think now these leaves mean precisely the same as you mean;
Grow up taller, sweet leaves, that I may see! grow up out of my breast!
Spring away from the conceal’d heart there!
Do not fold yourself so in your pink-tinged roots, timid leaves!
Do not remain down there so ashamed, herbage of my breast!
Come, I am determin’d to unbare this broad breast of mine—I have long enough
stifled
and
choked:
—Emblematic and capricious blade, I leave you—now you serve me not;
Away! I will say what I have to say, by itself,
I will escape from the sham that was proposed to me,
I will sound myself and comrades only—I will never again utter a call, only their
call,
I will raise, with it, immortal reverberations through The States,
I will give an example to lovers, to take permanent shape and will through The States;
Through me shall the words be said to make death exhilarating;
Give me your tone therefore, O Death, that I may accord with it,
Give me yourself—for I see that you belong to me now above all, and are folded
inseparably
together—you Love and Death are;
Nor will I allow you to balk me any more with what I was calling life,
For now it is convey’d to me that you are the purports essential,
That you hide in these shifting forms of life, for reasons—and that they are mainly
for
you,
That you, beyond them, come forth, to remain, the real reality,
That behind the mask of materials you patiently wait, no matter how long,
That you will one day, perhaps, take control of all,
That you will perhaps dissipate this entire show of appearance,
That may-be you are what it is all for—but it does not last so very long;
But you will last very long.
It's no secret that Walt Whitman did like to add himself into his poetry. He loved both men and women in his time and experiences flowed into his poetry. He wrote most about what he was passionate about whenever he composed his poetry. Throughout the Civil War he composed many poems about it, however the war was only a small part of his life. He had many other experiences as well, although he didn't write about all of them, he seemed to follow that trend for most of his life, even to the point of writing about death, even his own death, when he was already dying.