1878-91 Collection of Poems by Walt Whitman. Considered a major classic of American Literature. There were several different versions published as he kept adding new poems as he wrote them.

  • Leaves of Grass 1855 First edition
  • Leaves of Grass 1856 Second edition
  • Leaves of Grass 1860 Third edition
  • Leaves of Grass 1867 Fourth edition
  • Leaves of Grass 1870 Fifth edition
  • Leaves of Grass 1876 Centennial edition
  • Leaves of Grass 1881 Sixth edition
  • Leaves of Grass 1891 "Deathbed" edition

Ralph Vaughan Williams set it to music and called it A Sea Symphony.

Also see: North American Poetry


Source: http://www.bartleby.com/142/

Last Updated 11.23.02

I'm feeling feisty, and the copyright has expired, so I'm going to start my own personal quest: to node up Leaves of Grass.

I'll start with the section headings, and link the poems in underneath as I add them. If anyone knows of existing whitman nodes I've missed, or nodes any themselves then /msg me and I'll link it in! (if you feel like noding some, it's on the web in various spots. The list of poems I am taking from my paper edition, which I believe is the most complete, but of course individual poems have the same text and section in all editions, so no worries as to source.)

here we go!

Leaves of Grass

Inscriptions complete
-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
-Eidólons
-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 Paumanok complete

Song of Myself complete - at last! go read it!

Children of Adam complete
-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
-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

Calamus complete
-In Paths Untrodden
-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 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

Salut Au Monde! complete

Song of the Open Road complete

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry complete

Song of the Answerer complete

Our Old Feuillage complete

A Song of Joys complete

Song of the Broad-Axe complete

Song of the Exposition complete

Song of the Redwood-Tree complete

A Song for Occupations complete

A Song of the Rolling Earth complete

Youth, Day, Old Age and Night complete

Birds of Passage complete
-Song of the Universal
-Pioneers! O Pioneers!
-To You
-France
-Myself and Mine
-Year of Meteors
-With Antecedents

A Broadway Pageant complete

Sea-Drift complete
-Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
-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

By the Roadside complete
-A Boston Ballad
-Europe the 72nd and 73rd Years of These States
-A Hand-Mirror
-Gods
-Germs
-Thoughts
-When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
-Perfections
-O Me! O Life!
-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

Drum-taps complete
-First O Songs for a Prelude
-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
-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
-Adieu to a Soldier
-Turn O Libertad
-To the Leaven'd Soil They Trod

Memories of President Lincoln complete
-When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
-O Captain! My Captain!
-Hush'd Be the Camps To-Day
-This Dust Was Once the Man

By Blue Ontario's Shore complete
Reversals complete

Autumn Rivulets
-As Consequent, Etc.
-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 Lands
-Song of Prudence
-The Singer in the Prison

To Think of Time complete

Whispers of Heavenly Death

From Noon to Starry Night

Songs of Parting

Sands at Seventy

Good-bye My Fancy

Old Age Echoes (posthumous additions)


Uncollected and rejected poems

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.