The 1892 Leaves of Grass, for sentimental and promotional reasons dubbed the "Deathbed Edition" by Whitman’s literary executors and his Philadelphia publisher, was a bulky volume of r38 pages and almost as many poems. Some were love lyrics, candid and explicit celebrations of sexuality, visionary musings,glimpses of nightmare and ecstasy, poems of loneliness, loss, and mourning, among them Whitman’s supreme elegy for Abraham Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d." Others---"Song of Myself," "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry";and "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," for example--were personal testaments that also epitomized American vision and experience in the nineteenth century.

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One of the great innovative figures in American letters,Walt Whitman created a daringly new kind of poetry that became a major force in world literature. Leaves of Grass is his one book. First published in 1855 with only twelve poems, it was greeted by Ralph Waldo Emerson as "the wonderful gift..., the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed."Over the course of Whitman’s life, the book reappeared in many versions, expanded and transformed as the author’s experiences and the nation"s history changed and grew. Whitman’s ambition was to create something uniquely American. In that he succeeded. His poems have been woven into the very fabric of the American character. From his solemn masterpieces "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d" and "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" to the joyous freedom of "Song of Myself," "I Sing the Body Electric," and "Song of the Open Road," Whitman’s work lives on, an inspiration to the poets of later generations.

Introduction by Justin Kaplan

INSCRIPTIONS

One’s-Self I Sing

As I Ponder’d in Silence

In Cabin’d Ships at Sea

To Foreign Lands

To a Historian

To Thee Old Cause

Eid61ons

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

 Starting from Panmanok

 Song of Myself

CHILDREN OF ADAM

To the Garden the World

From Pent-up Aching Rivers

I Sing the Body Electric

A Woman Waits for Me

Spontaneous Me

One Hour to Madness and Joy

……

CALAMUS

BIRDS OF PASSAGE

SEA-DRIFT

BY THE ROADSIDE

DRUM-TAPS

MEMORIES OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN

AUTUMN RIVULETS

WHISPERS OF HEAVELY DEATH

FROM NOON TO STARRY NIGHT

SONGS OF PARTING

FIRST ANNEX:SANDS AT SEVENTY

SECOND ANNEX:GOOD-BYE MY FANCY

A Backward Glance O er Travel d Roads

Glossary

Bibliography

Index of Titles and First Lines