Adam Leith Gollner assesses Whitman’s take on the divine:
He finds God in the tiniest, most ordinary places. Some barns, any old gnat, the breeze; all revelations. Whitman wasn’t religious in the sense of belonging to an institutional organization, but nor could he accept the limitations of atheism or agnosticism. A little mouse “is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.” Unbelievers merely have to look around to be convinced, he wrote. Trees, seaweed, squirrels—everything is immortal: “I swear I see now that every thing has an eternal soul!”
This truth is omnigenous, Whitman felt, meaning it is in all things. We can find it anywhere, in the hollows at the bottom of the sea, in rocky riverbeds, in dust. If we ever lose sight of it, we can find it simply by looking under our boots, Whitman assured us. The message is all around us. “Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.” So even if we can’t see it right away, we have the ability to see it. Finding it doesn’t mean understanding it. “I hear and behold God in every object,” Whitman admits, “yet understand God not in the least.”
The Dish 