Surprising Quotation From Walt Whitman

“It may be argued that our republic is, in performance, really enacting today the grandest arts, poems, etc. by beating up the wilderness into fertile farms, and in her railroads, ships, machinery, etc. And it may be asked, Are these not better, indeed, for America, than any utterances even of greatest rhapsode, artist, or literatus?”

Walt Whitman; Democratic Vistas; 1871

Then, the contextualization: 
http://www.philosophicalsociety.com/Archives/Walt%20Whitman's%20Rebuke.htm

Context is everything.

And every text without a context is a pretext.