Leaves of Grass: Illustrated Classic Editions

A collection of poetry by the 19th-century American poet, Walt Whitman.

Includes an extensive section on Whitman's life and works, notes and indexes

Whitman, the great poet, has meant so much to me. Whitman the one man breaking a way ahead. Whitman the one pioneer. Ahead of Whitman, nothing. Ahead of all poets, pioneering into the wilderness of unopened life, Whitman. Beyond him, none.

Introduction - i: Introduction Unit - 1: Inscriptions Chapter - 1: To Foreign Lands Chapter - 2: Song of Myself Chapter - 3: When I Read The Book Chapter - 4: To The States Chapter - 4: Shut Not Your Doors Unit - 2: Children of Adam Chapter - 1: I Sing the Body Electric Chapter - 2: A Woman Waits for Me Unit - 3: Calamus Chapter - 1: In Paths Untrodden Chapter - 2: Scented Herbage of my Breast Chapter - 3: Whoever You are Holding Me Now in Hand Chapter - 4: For You O Democracy Chapter - 5: The Base of All Metaphysics Chapter - 6: Recorders Ages Hence Chapter - 7: When I Heard at the Close of Day Chapter - 8: Are You the New Person Drawn toward Me Chapter - 9: I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing Chapter - 10: To a Stranger Chapter - 11: This Moment Yearning and Thoughtful Chapter - 12: I Hear it was Charged Against Me Chapter - 13: When I Peruse the Conquer'd Flame Chapter - 14: We Two Boys together Clinging Chapter - 15: No Labor-Saving Machine Chapter - 16: A Glimpse Chapter - 17: What Think You I Take Pen in Hand? Chapter - 18: Sometimes with One I Love Chapter - 19: Song of the Open Road Chapter - 20: Crossing Brooklyn Ferry Unit - 4: Birds of Passage Chapter - 1: Pioneers! O Pioneers! Unit - 5: Sea Drift Chapter - 1: Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking Unit - 6: By the Roadside Chapter - 1: When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer Unit - 7: Drum Taps Chapter - 1: Beat! Beat! Drums! Chapter - 2: Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night Chapter - 3: The Wound-Dresser Chapter - 4: The Artilleryman's Vision Chapter - 5: O Tan-Faced Prairie Boy Chapter - 6: How Solemn as One by One Chapter - 7: As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado Chapter - 8: Spirit Whose Work is Done Unit - 8: Memoirs of President Lincoln Chapter - 1: When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd Chapter - 2: O Captain! My Captain! Chapter - 3: Hush'd be the Camps To-day Chapter - 4: By Blue Ontario's Shores Unit - 9: Autumn Rivulets Chapter - 1: There was a Child went Forth Chapter - 2: The City Dead-House Chapter - 3: Passage to India Chapter - 4: Prayer of Columbus Chapter - 5: The Sleepers Unit - 10: Whispers of Heavenly Death Chapter - 1: A Noiseless Patient Spider Unit - 11: From Noon to Starry Night Chapter - 1: The Mystic Trumpeter Unit - 12: Annex to Sands at Seventy Chapter - 1: As I Sit Writing Here Chapter - 2: Queries to My Seventieth Year Chapter - 3: Old Salt Kossabone Index - ii: Index of Poem Titles Index - iii: Index of First Lines

ONE'S-SELF I SING.


One's-self I sing, a simple separate person,

Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.


Of physiology from top to toe I sing,

Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far,

The Female equally with the Male I sing.


Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,

Cheerful, for freest action form'd under the laws divine,

The Modern Man I sing.



AS I PONDER'D IN SILENCE.


As I ponder' in silence,

Returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long,

A Phantom arose before me with distrustful aspect,

Terrible in beauty, age, and power,

The genius of poets of old lands,

As to me directing like flame its eyes,

With finger pointing to many immortal songs,

And menacing voice, What singest thou? it said,

Know'st thou not there is but one theme for ever-enduring bards?

And that is the theme of War, the fortune of battles,

The making of perfect soldiers.


Be it so, then I answer'd,

I too haughty Shade also sing war, and a longer and greater one than any,

Waged in my book with varying fortune, with flight, advance and retreat, victory deferr&rsquod and wavering,

(Yet methinks certain, or as good as certain, at the last,) the field the world,

For life and death, for the Body and for the eternal Soul,

Lo, I too am come, chanting the chant of battles,

I above all promote brave soldiers.



IN CABIN'D SHIPS AT SEA.


In cabin'd ships at sea,

The boundless blue on every side expanding,

With whistling winds and music of the waves, the large imperious waves,

Or some lone bark buoy'd on the dense marine,

Where joyous full of faith, spreading white sails,

She cleaves the ether mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or under many a star at night,

By sailors young and old haply will I, a reminiscence of the land, be read,

In full rapport at last.


Here are our thoughts, voyagers' thoughts,

Here not the land, firm land, alone appears, may then by them be said,

The sky o'arches here, we feel the undulating deck beneath our feet,

We feel the long pulsation, ebb and flow of endless motion,

The tones of unseen mystery, the vague and vast suggestions of the briny world, the liquid-flowing syllables,

The perfume, the faint creaking of the cordage, the melancholy rhythm,

The boundless vista and the horizon far and dim are all here,

And this is ocean's poem.


Then falter not O book, fulfil your destiny,

You not a reminiscence of the land alone,

You too as a lone bark cleaving the ether, purpos'd I know not whither, yet ever full of faith,

Consort to every ship that sails, sail you!

Bear forth to them folded my love, (dear mariners, for you I fold it here in every leaf;)

Speed on my book! spread your white sails my little bark athwart the imperious waves,

Chant on, sail on, bear o'er the boundless blue from me to every sea,

This song for mariners and all their ships.


From the eBook edition.

It is not only the allusions to sex and physiology that disturbed Whitman's critics but also his departure from the rules of conventional poetry. He broke down the standard metred line, discard the obligatory rhyming scheme, and freely expressed himself in the living vernacular of American speech.