Leaves Of Grass

Walt Whitman

• Publisher: Caelwick Press
• Year: 2026
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9784819346672
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Walt Whitman consciously set out to forge a personal path for himself as a poet. Inspired by contemporaries like Emerson who expressed a need for a new, uniquely American style of poetry, Whitman eschewed conventions he saw as outdated or undemocratic. Setting aside traditional rhyme, meter, and even brevity, Whitman favored a style that was declarative, direct, and maximalist. For subject matter he focused on the common individual, as democratic representative of all humanity, and the natural world of which humanity exists as an integral part. "Song of Myself" is perhaps the most well-known exemplar of this aesthetic. Whitman's poetic career took an abrupt turn during the American Civil War, and his poems from that time draw on his experiences volunteering at military hospitals. These, coupled with his elegy for President Lincoln after his assassination ("When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"), helped to cement Whitman's position as a particularly American voice. Among Whitman's recurring themes are the embracing of sensual pleasures, including frank acknowledgments of homosexuality. This latter aspect drove several contemporary critics to reject his work as indecent. Threats of censorship and outright banning encouraged his supporters to speak more publicly in defense of his work, however, and Whitman is now considered to be one of America's most important poets. Leaves of Grass was continually edited and extended over most of Whitman's life. Months before his death, he announced that the next edition would be the complete and definitive one. Referred to now as the "deathbed edition," it was published in 1892 by Whitman's literary executors, and is the basis for this ebook.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• LEAVES OF GRASS
• BOOK I. INSCRIPTIONS
• As I Ponder’d in Silence
• In Cabin’d Ships at Sea
• To Foreign Lands
• To a Historian
• To Thee Old Cause
• Eidolons
• For Him I Sing
• When I Read the Book
• Beginning My Studies
• Beginners
• To the States
• On Journeys Through the States
• To a Certain Cantatrice
• Me Imperturbe
• Savantism
• The Ship Starting
• I Hear America Singing
• What Place Is Besieged?
• Still Though the One I Sing
• Shut Not Your Doors
• Poets to Come
• To You
• Thou Reader
• BOOK II
• BOOK III
• BOOK IV. CHILDREN OF ADAM
• From Pent-Up Aching Rivers
• I Sing the Body Electric
• A Woman Waits for Me
• Spontaneous Me
• One Hour to Madness and Joy
• Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd
• Ages and Ages Returning at Intervals
• We Two, How Long We Were Fool’d
• O Hymen! O Hymenee!
• I Am He That Aches with Love
• Native Moments
• Once I Pass’d Through a Populous City
• I Heard You Solemn-Sweet Pipes of the Organ
• Facing West from California’s Shores
• As Adam Early in the Morning
• BOOK V. CALAMUS
• Scented Herbage of My Breast
• Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand
• For You, O Democracy
• These I Singing in Spring
• Not Heaving from My Ribb’d Breast Only
• Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances
• The Base of All Metaphysics
• Recorders Ages Hence
• When I Heard at the Close of the Day
• Are You the New Person Drawn Toward Me?
• Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone
• Not Heat Flames Up and Consumes
• Trickle Drops
• City of Orgies
• Behold This Swarthy Face
• I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing
• To a Stranger
• This Moment Yearning and Thoughtful
• I Hear It Was Charged Against Me
• The Prairie-Grass Dividing
• When I Peruse the Conquer’d Fame
• We Two Boys Together Clinging
• A Promise to California
• Here the Frailest Leaves of Me
• No Labor-Saving Machine
• A Glimpse
• A Leaf for Hand in Hand
• Earth, My Likeness
• I Dream’d in a Dream
• What Think You I Take My Pen in Hand?
• To the East and to the West
• Sometimes with One I Love
• To a Western Boy
• Fast Anchor’d Eternal O Love!
• Among the Multitude
• O You Whom I Often and Silently Come
• That Shadow My Likeness
• Full of Life Now
• BOOK VI
• BOOK VII
• BOOK VIII
• BOOK IX
• BOOK X
• BOOK XI
• BOOK XII
• BOOK XIII
• BOOK XIV
• BOOK XV
• BOOK XVI
• Youth, Day, Old Age and Night
• BOOK XVII. BIRDS OF PASSAGE
• Pioneers! O Pioneers!
• To You
• France [the 18th Year of these States
• Myself and Mine
• Year of Meteors [1859-60
• With Antecedents
• BOOK XVIII
• BOOK XIX. SEA-DRIFT
• As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life
• Tears
• To the Man-of-War-Bird
• Aboard at a Ship’s Helm
• On the Beach at Night
• The World below the Brine
• On the Beach at Night Alone
• Song for All Seas, All Ships
• Patroling Barnegat
• After the Sea-Ship
• BOOK XX. BY THE ROADSIDE
• Europe [The 72d and 73d Years of These States]
• A Hand-Mirror
• Gods
• Germs
• Thoughts
• Perfections
• To a President
• I Sit and Look Out
• To Rich Givers
• The Dalliance of the Eagles
• Roaming in Thought [After reading Hegel]
• A Farm Picture
• A Child’s Amaze
• The Runner
• Beautiful Women
• Mother and Babe
• Thought
• Visor’d
• Thought
• Gliding O’er all
• Hast Never Come to Thee an Hour
• Thought
• To Old Age
• Locations and Times
• Offerings
• To The States [To Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad]
• BOOK XXI. DRUM-TAPS
• Eighteen Sixty-One
• Beat! Beat! Drums!
• From Paumanok Starting I Fly Like a Bird
• Song of the Banner at Daybreak
• Rise O Days from Your Fathomless Deeps
• Virginia—The West
• City of Ships
• The Centenarian’s Story
• Cavalry Crossing a Ford
• Bivouac on a Mountain Side
• An Army Corps on the March
• By the Bivouac’s Fitful Flame
• Come Up from the Fields Father
• Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
• A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown
• A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim
• As Toilsome I Wander’d Virginia’s Woods
• Not the Pilot
• Year That Trembled and Reel’d Beneath Me
• The Wound-Dresser
• Long, Too Long America
• Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun
• Dirge for Two Veterans
• Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice
• I Saw Old General at Bay
• The Artilleryman’s Vision
• Ethiopia Saluting the Colors
• Not Youth Pertains to Me
• Race of Veterans
• World Take Good Notice
• O Tan-Faced Prairie-Boy
• Look Down Fair Moon
• Reconciliation
• How Solemn As One by One [Washington City, 1865]
• As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado
• Delicate Cluster
• To a Certain Civilian
• Lo, Victress on the Peaks
• Spirit Whose Work Is Done [Washington City, 1865]
• Adieu to a Soldier
• Turn O Libertad
• To the Leaven’d Soil They Trod
• BOOK XXII. MEMORIES OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN
• O Captain! My Captain!
• Hush’d Be the Camps To-Day [May 4, 1865
• This Dust Was Once the Man
• BOOK XXIII
• Reversals
• BOOK XXIV. AUTUMN RIVULETS
• The Return of the Heroes
• There Was a Child Went Forth
• Old Ireland
• The City Dead-House
• This Compost
• To a Foil’d European Revolutionaire
• Unnamed Land
• Song of Prudence
• The Singer in the Prison
• Warble for Lilac-Time
• Outlines for a Tomb [G. P., Buried 1870]
• Out from Behind This Mask [To Confront a Portrait]
• Vocalism
• To Him That Was Crucified
• You Felons on Trial in Courts
• Laws for Creations
• To a Common Prostitute
• I Was Looking a Long While
• Thought
• Miracles
• Sparkles from the Wheel
• To a Pupil
• Unfolded out of the Folds
• What Am I After All
• Kosmos
• Others May Praise What They Like
• Who Learns My Lesson Complete?
• Tests
• The Torch
• O Star of France [1870-71]
• The Ox-Tamer
• Wandering at Morn
• With All Thy Gifts
• My Picture-Gallery
• The Prairie States
• BOOK XXV
• BOOK XXVI
• BOOK XXVII
• BOOK XXVIII
• Transpositions
• BOOK XXIX
• BOOK XXX. WHISPERS OF HEAVENLY DEATH
• Whispers of Heavenly Death
• Chanting the Square Deific
• Of Him I Love Day and Night
• Yet, Yet, Ye Downcast Hours
• As If a Phantom Caress’d Me
• Assurances
• Quicksand Years
• That Music Always Round Me
• What Ship Puzzled at Sea
• A Noiseless Patient Spider
• O Living Always, Always Dying
• To One Shortly to Die
• Night on the Prairies
• Thought
• The Last Invocation
• As I Watch the Ploughman Ploughing
• Pensive and Faltering
• BOOK XXXI
• A Paumanok Picture
• BOOK XXXII. FROM NOON TO STARRY NIGHT
• Faces
• The Mystic Trumpeter
• To a Locomotive in Winter
• O Magnet-South
• Mannahatta
• All Is Truth
• A Riddle Song
• Excelsior
• Ah Poverties, Wincings, and Sulky Retreats
• Thoughts
• Mediums
• Weave in, My Hardy Life
• Spain, 1873-74
• By Broad Potomac’s Shore
• From Far Dakota’s Canyons [June 25, 1876]
• Old War-Dreams
• Thick-Sprinkled Bunting
• As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days
• A Clear Midnight
• BOOK XXXIII. SONGS OF PARTING
• Years of the Modern
• Ashes of Soldiers
• Thoughts
• Song at Sunset
• As at Thy Portals Also Death
• My Legacy
• Pensive on Her Dead Gazing
• Camps of Green
• The Sobbing of the Bells [Midnight, Sept. 19-20, 1881]
• As They Draw to a Close
• Joy, Shipmate, Joy!
• The Untold Want
• Portals
• These Carols
• Now Finale to the Shore
• So Long!
• BOOK XXXIV. SANDS AT SEVENTY
• Paumanok
• From Montauk Point
• To Those Who’ve Fail’d
• A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine
• The Bravest Soldiers
• A Font of Type
• As I Sit Writing Here
• My Canary Bird
• Queries to My Seventieth Year
• The Wallabout Martyrs
• The First Dandelion
• America
• Memories
• To-Day and Thee
• After the Dazzle of Day
• Abraham Lincoln, Born Feb. 12, 1809
• Out of May’s Shows Selected
• Halcyon Days
• Election Day, November, 1884
• With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea!
• Death of General Grant
• Red Jacket (From Aloft)
• Washington’s Monument February, 1885
• Of That Blithe Throat of Thine
• Broadway
• To Get the Final Lilt of Songs
• Old Salt Kossabone
• The Dead Tenor
• Continuities
• Yonnondio
• Life
• “Going Somewhere”
• Small the Theme of My Chant
• True Conquerors
• The United States to Old World Critics
• The Calming Thought of All
• Thanks in Old Age
• Life and Death
• The Voice of the Rain
• Soon Shall the Winter’s Foil Be Here
• While Not the Past Forgetting
• The Dying Veteran
• Stronger Lessons
• A Prairie Sunset
• Twenty Years
• Orange Buds by Mail from Florida
• Twilight
• You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me
• Not Meagre, Latent Boughs Alone
• The Dead Emperor
• As the Greek’s Signal Flame
• The Dismantled Ship
• Now Precedent Songs, Farewell
• An Evening Lull
• Old Age’s Lambent Peaks
• After the Supper and Talk
• BOOKXXXV. GOOD-BYE MY FANCY
• Lingering Last Drops
• Good-Bye My Fancy
• On, on the Same, Ye Jocund Twain!
• MY 71st Year
• Apparitions
• The Pallid Wreath
• An Ended Day
• Old Age’s Ship & Crafty Death’s
• To the Pending Year
• Shakspere-Bacon’s Cipher
• Long, Long Hence
• Bravo, Paris Exposition!
• Interpolation Sounds
• To the Sun-Set Breeze
• Old Chants
• A Christmas Greeting
• Sounds of the Winter
• A Twilight Song
• When the Full-Grown Poet Came
• Osceola
• A Voice from Death
• A Persian Lesson
• The Commonplace
• “The Rounded Catalogue Divine Complete”
• Mirages
• L. of G.’s Purport
• The Unexpress’d
• Grand Is the Seen
• Unseen Buds
• Good-Bye My Fancy!