Walt Whitman's Love of Life

In section 48 of his poem "Song of Myself" Walt Whitman wrote:

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

Over fifty years ago Evelyn Millis Duvall wrote, "Walt Whitman has been an able spokesman for the love of life. In his incomparable way, he sees life as the very signature of God when he says in [section 48 of] 'Song of Myself':"

I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,
I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd by God's name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Photo credit: George Collins Cox, 1887