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Walt Whitman: Poetry & Prose

1855 and 1891–92 editions of Leaves of Grass | Specimen Days and Collect | other prose works More

Edited by Justin Kaplan

“Beautiful and authoritative . . . the most comprehensive volume ever published of the works of Whitman.” — The New York Times

Overview
News & Views
Table of Contents

Overview

Story of the Week Walt Whitman, “Death of a Pennsylvania Soldier”
May 31, 2022

News Happy 200th birthday, Walt Whitman
May 31, 2019

Interviews Walt Whitman speaks!—embraces multitudes, and becomes our contemporary
May 31, 2019

This Library of America edition is the most comprehensive volume of the work of Walt Whitman ever published. It includes his poetry and what he considered his complete prose. It is also the only collection that includes, in exactly the form in which it appeared in 1855, the first edition of Leaves of Grass. This was the book, a commercial failure, which prompted Emerson’s famous message to Whitman: “I greet you at the beginning of a great career.” These twelve poems, including what were later to be entitled “Song of Myself” and “I Sing the Body Electric,” and a preface announcing the author’s poetic theories, were the first stage of a massive, lifelong work. Six editions and some thirty-seven years later, Leaves of Grass had become one of the central volumes in the history of world poetry.

Each edition involved revisions of earlier poems and the incorporation of new ones. In 1856, for example, he added such poems as “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” and “Spontaneous Me;” in the third edition (1860), “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” and two new sections, “Calamus” and “Children of Adam.” In the fourth (1867), he incorporated the Civil War poems published a few years earlier as Drum-Taps and Sequel to Drum-Taps, including the poems on the death of Lincoln, notably “When Lilacs Last in the Door Yard Bloom’d.” As it progressed, it was hailed by Emerson, Thoreau, Rosetti and others, but was also, as with the sixth edition in 1881–82, beset by charges of obscenity for such poems as “A Woman Waits for Me.” Printed here is the final, great culminating edition of 1891–92, the last supervised by Whitman himself just before his death.

Whitman’s prose is no less extraordinary. Specimen Days and Collect (1882) includes reminiscences of nineteenth-century New York City that will fascinate readers in the twenty-first, notes on the Civil War, especially his service in Washington hospitals, and trenchant comments on books and authors. Democratic Vistas (1871), in its attacks on the misuses of national wealth after the Civil War, is relevant to conditions in our own time, and November Boughs (1888) brings together retrospective prefaces, opinions, and random autobiographical bits that are in effect an extended epilogue on Whitman’s life, works, and times.

Justin Kaplan, volume editor, is a writer whose works include Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, which won a Pulitzer Prize in biography and a National Book Award. His Walt Whitman: A Life won the 1981 American Book Award for Biography.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

Walt Whitman: Poetry & Prose is kept in print by a gift from Fiona and Eric Rudin to the Guardians of American Letters Fund, made in memory of Jane Wilde Howe.
News & Views

Story of the Week Walt Whitman, “Death of a Pennsylvania Soldier”
May 31, 2022

News Happy 200th birthday, Walt Whitman
May 31, 2019

Interviews Walt Whitman speaks!—embraces multitudes, and becomes our contemporary
May 31, 2019

News | Video Documentary project locates Walt Whitman’s “multitudes” in today’s Deep South
May 31, 2019

News Photo tour: Walt Whitman’s New Jersey, scene of his recovery and final rest
May 31, 2019
Table of Contents

Leaves of Grass (1855)
These poems had no titles in 1855, and no titles appear in the text of the present edition. Whitman eventually gave the poems the titles shown here.
Preface
Song of Myself
A Song for Occupations
To Think of Time
The Sleepers
I Sing the Body Electric
Faces
Song of the Answerer
Europe the 72d and 73d Years of These States
A Boston Ballad
There Was a Child Went Forth
Who Learns My Lesson Complete
Great Are the Myths

Leaves of Grass (1891-92)

INSCRIPTIONS
One’s—Self I Sing (1867, 1871)
As I Ponder’d in Silence (1871)
In Cabin’d Ships at Sea (1871)
To Foreign Lands (1860, 1871)
To a Historian (1860, 1871)
To Thee Old Cause (1871, 1881)
Eidólons (1876)
For Him I Sing (1871)
When I Read the Book (1867, 1871)
Beginning My Studies (1865, 1871)
Beginners (1860)
To The States (1860, 1881)
On Journeys through the States (1860, 1871)
To a Certain Cantatrice (1860, 1871)
Me Imperturbe (1860, 1881)
Savantism (1860)
The Ship Starting (1865, 1881)
I Hear America Singing (1860, 1867)
What Place Is Besieged? (1860, 1867)
Still Though the One I Sing (1871)
Shut Not Your Doors (1865, 1881)
Poets to Come (1860, 1867)
To You (1860)
Thou Reader (1881)
Starting from Paumanok (1860, 1881)
Song of Myself (1855, 1881)

CHILDREN OF ADAM
To the Garden the World (1860, 1867)
From Pent-up Aching Rivers (1860, 1881)
I Sing the Body Electric (1855, 1881)
A Woman Waits for Me (1856, 1871)
Spontaneous Me (1856, 1867)
One Hour to Madness and Joy (1860, 1881)
Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd (1865, 1881)
Ages and Ages Returning at Intervals (1860, 1867)
We Two, How Long We Were Fool’d (1860, 1881)
O Hymen! O Hymenee! (1860, 1867)
I Am He that Aches with Love (1860, 1867)
Native Moments (1860, 1881)
Once I Pass’d through a Populous City (1860, 1861)
I Heard You Solemn-Sweet Pipes of the Organ (1861, 1867)
Facing West from California’s Shores (1860, 1867)
As Adam Early in the Morning (1861, 1867)

CALAMUS
In Paths Untrodden (1860, 1867)
Scented Herbage of My Breast (1860, 1881)
Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand (1860, 1881)
For You O Democracy (1860, 1881)
These I Singing in Spring (1860, 1867)
Not Heaving from My Ribb’d Breast Only (1860, 1867)
Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances (1860, 1867)
The Base of All Metaphysics (1871)
Recorders Ages Hence (1860, 1867)
When I Heard at the Close of the Day (1860, 1867)
Are You the New Person Drawn toward Me? (1860, 1867)
Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone (1860, 1867)
Not Heat Flames up and Consumes (1860, 1867)
Trickle Drops (1860, 1867)
City of Orgies (1860, 1867)
Behold This Swarthy Face (1860, 1871)
I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing (1860, 1867)
To a Stranger (1860, 1867)
This Moment Yearning and Thoughtful (1860, 1881)
I Hear It Was Charged against Me (1860, 1867)
The Prairie-Grass Dividing (1860, 1867)
When I Peruse the Conquer’d Fame (1860, 1871)
We Two Boys Together Clinging (1860, 1867)
A Promise to California (1860, 1867)
Here the Frailest Leaves of Me (1860, 1871)
No Labor-Saving Machine (1860, 1881)
A Glimpse (1860, 1867)
A Leaf for Hand in Hand (1860, 1867)
Earth, My Likeness (1860, 1867)
I Dream’d in a Dream (1860, 1867)
What Think You I Take My Pen in Hand? (1860, 1881)
To the East and to the West (1860, 1867)
Sometimes with One I Love (1860, 1867)
To a Western Boy (1860, 1881)
Fast-Anchor’d Eternal O Love! (1860, 1867)
Among the Multitude (1860, 1881)
O You Whom I Often and Silently Come (1860, 1867)
That Shadow My Likeness (1860, 1881)
Full of Life Now (1860, 1871)
Salut au Monde! (1856, 1881)
Song of the Open Road (1856, 1881)
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry (1856, 1881)
Song of the Answerer (1855, 1856, 1881)
Our Old Feuillage (1860, 1881)
A Song of Joys (1860, 1881)
Song of the Broad-Axe (1856, 1881)
Song of the Exposition (1871, 1881)
Song of the Redwood-Tree (1874, 1881)
A Song for Occupations (1855, 1881)
A Song of the Rolling Earth (1856, 1881)
Youth, Day, Old Age and Night (1855, 1881)

BIRDS OF PASSAGE
Song of the Universal (1874, 1881)
Pioneers! O Pioneers! (1865, 1881)
To You (1856, 1881)
France, The 18th Year of these States (1860, 1871)
Myself and Mine (1860, 1881)
Year of Meteors (1859-60) (1865, 1881)
With Antecedents (1860, 1881)
A Broadway Pageant (1860, 1881)

SEA-DRIFT
Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking (1859, 1881)
As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life (1860, 1881)
Tears (1867, 1871)
To the Man-of-War-Bird (1876, 1881)
Aboard at a Ship’s Helm (1867, 1881)
On the Beach at Night (1871, 1881)
The World below the Brine (1860, 1871)
On the Beach at Night Alone (1856, 1881)
Song for All Seas, All Ships (1873, 1881)
Patroling Barnegat (1880, 1881)
After the Sea-Ship (1874, 1881)

BY THE ROADSIDE
A Boston Ballad—1854 (1854, 1871)
Europe, The 72d and 73d Years of These States (1850, 1871)
A Hand-Mirror (1860)
Gods (1871, 1881)
Germs (1860, 1871)
Thoughts (1860, 1881)
When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer (1865)
Perfections (1860)
O Me! O Life! (1865-66, 1881)
To a President (1860)
I Sit and Look Out (1860, 1871)
To Rich Givers (1860, 1881)
The Dalliance of the Eagles (1880, 1881)
Roaming in Thought (1881)
A Farm Picture (1865, 1871)
A Child’s Amaze (1865, 1867)
The Runner (1867)
Beautiful Women (1860, 1871)
Mother and Babe (1865, 1867)
Thought (1860)
Visor’d (1860, 1867)
Thought (1860)
Gliding o’er All (1871)
Hast Never Come to Thee an Hour (1881)
Thought (1860, 1871)
To Old Age (1860)
Locations and Times (1860, 1871)
Offerings (1860, 1871)
To the States, To Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad (1860)

DRUM-TAPS
First O Songs for a Prelude (1865, 1881)
Eighteen Sixty-One (1865, 1881)
Beat! Beat! Drums! (1861, 1867)
From Paumanok Starting I Fly like a Bird (1865, 1867)
Song of the Banner at Daybreak (1865, 1881)
Rise O Days from Your Fathomless Deeps (1865, 1867)
Virginia—The West (1872, 1881)
City of Ships (1865, 1867)
The Centenarian’s Story (1865, 1881)
Cavalry Crossing a Ford (1865, 1871)
Bivouac on a Mountain Side (1865, 1871)
An Army Corps on the March (1865-66, 1871)
By the Bivouac’s Fitful Flame (1865, 1867)
Come Up from the Fields Father (1865, 1867)
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night (1865, 1867)
A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown (1865, 1867)
A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim (1865, 1867)
As Toilsome I Wander’d Virginia’s Woods (1865, 1867)
Not the Pilot (1860, 1881)
Year That Trembled and Reel’d Beneath Me (1865, 1867)
The Wound-Dresser (1865, 1881)
Long, Too Long America (1865, 1881)
Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun (1865, 1881)
Dirge for Two Veterans (1865-66, 1867)
Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice (1860, 1867)
I Saw Old General at Bay (1865, 1867)
The Artilleryman’s Vision (1865, 1881)
Ethiopia Saluting the Colors (1871, 1881)
Not Youth Pertains to Me (1865, 1871)
Race of Veterans (1865-66, 1871)
World Take Good Notice (1865, 1881)
O Tan-Faced Prairie-Boy (1865, 1867)
Look Down Fair Moon (1865, 1881)
Reconciliation (1865-66, 1881)
How Solemn as One by One (1865-66, 1881)
As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap Camerado (1865-66, 1881)
Delicate Cluster (1871)
To a Certain Civilian (1865, 1871)
Lo, Victress on the Peaks (1865-66, 1881)
Spirit Whose Work Is Done (1865-66, 1881)
Adieu to a Soldier (1871)
Turn O Libertad (1865, 1871)
To the Leaven’d Soil They Trod (1865-66, 1881)

MEMORIES OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d (1865-66, 1881)
O Captain! My Captain! (1865-66, 1871)
Hush’d Be the Camps To-day (1865, 1871)
This Dust Was Once the Man (1871)
By Blue Ontario’s Shore (1856, 1881)
Reversals (1856, 1881)

AUTUMN RIVULETS
As Consequent, Etc. (1876, 1881)
The Return of the Heroes (1867, 1881)
There Was a Child Went Forth (1855, 1871)
Old Ireland (1861, 1867)
The City Dead-House (1867, 1881)
This Compost (1856, 1881)
To a Foil’d European Revolutionaire (1856, 1881)
Unnamed Lands (1860, 1881)
Song of Prudence (1856, 1881)
The Singer in the Prison (1869, 1881)
Warble for Lilac-Time (1870, 1881)
Outlines for a Tomb (1870, 1881)
Out from Behind This Mask (1876, 1881)
Vocalism (1860, 1881)
To Him That Was Crucified (1860, 1881)
You Felons on Trial in Courts (1860, 1867)
Laws for Creations (1860, 1871)
To a Common Prostitute (1860)
I Was Looking a Long While (1860, 1881)
Thought (1860, 1871)
Miracles (1856, 1881)
Sparkles from the Wheel (1871)
To a Pupil (1860, 1867)
Unfolded Out of the Folds (1856, 1881)
What Am I After All (1860, 1867)
Kosmos (1860, 1867)
Others May Praise What They Like (1865, 1881)
Who Learns My Lesson Complete? (1855, 1867)
Tests (1860)
The Torch (1865, 1871)
O Star of France ;op1870-71;cp (1871, 1880)
The Ox-Tamer (1874, 1881)
An Old Man’s Thought of School (1874, 1881)
Wandering at Morn (1873, 1881)
Italian Music in Dakota (1881)
With All Thy Gifts (1873, 1881)
My Picture-Gallery (1880, 1881)
The Prairie States (1880, 1881)
Proud Music of the Storm (1869, 1881)
Passage to India (1871, 1881)
Prayer of Columbus (1874, 1881)
The Sleepers (1855, 1881)
Transpositions (1856, 1881)
To Think of Time (1855, 1881)

WHISPERS OF HEAVENLY DEATH
Darest Thou Now O Soul (1868, 1881)
Whispers of Heavenly Death (1868, 1871)
Chanting the Square Deific (1865-66, 1881)
Of Him I Love Day and Night (1860, 1867)
Yet, Yet, Ye Downcast Hours (1860, 1871)
As If a Phantom Caress’d Me (1860, 1867)
Assurances (1856, 1871)
Quicksand Years (1865, 1871)
That Music Always Round Me (1860, 1867)
What Ship Puzzled at Sea (1860, 1881)
A Noiseless Patient Spider (1868, 1881)
O Living Always, Always Dying (1860, 1867)
To One Shortly to Die (1860, 1871)
Night on the Prairies (1860, 1871)
Thought (1860, 1871)
The Last Invocation (1868, 1871)
As I Watch’d the Ploughman Ploughing (1871)
Pensive and Faltering (1868, 1871)
Thou Mother with Thy Equal Brood (1872, 1881)
A Paumanok Picture (1881)

FROM NOON TO STARRY NIGHT
Thou Orb Aloft Full-Dazzling (1881)
Faces (1855, 1881)
The Mystic Trumpeter (1872, 1881)
To a Locomotive in Winter (1876, 1881)
O Magnet-South (1860, 1881)
Mannahatta (1860, 1881)
All Is Truth (1860, 1871)
A Riddle Song (1880, 1881)
Excelsior (1856, 1881)
Ah Poverties, Wincings, and Sulky Retreats (1865-66, 1881)
Thoughts (1860, 1881)
Mediums (1860, 1871)
Weave In, My Hardy Life (1865, 1881)
Spain, 1873-74 (1873, 1881)
By Broad Potomac’s Shore (1872, 1881)
From Far Dakota’s Cañons (1876, 1881)
Old War-Dreams (1865-66, 1881)
Thick-Sprinkled Bunting (1865, 1881)
What Best I See in Thee (1881)
Spirit That Form’d This Scene (1881)
As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days (1860, 1881)
A Clear Midnight (1881)

SONGS OF PARTING
As the Time Draws Nigh (1860, 1871)
Years of the Modern (1865, 1881)
Ashes of Soldiers (1865, 1881)
Thoughts (1860, 1881)
Song at Sunset (1860, 1881)
As at Thy Portals Also Death (1881)
My Legacy (1872, 1881)
Pensive on Her Dead Gazing (1865, 1881)
Camps of Green (1865, 1881)
The Sobbing of the Bells (1881)
As They Draw to a Close (1871, 1881)
Joy, Shipmate, Joy! (1871)
The Untold Want (1871)
Portals (1871)
These Carols (1871)
Now Final;age to the Shore (1871)
So Long! (1860, 1881)

FIRST ANNEX: SANDS AT SEVENTY
Mannahatta (1888, 1888-89)
Paumanok (1888, 1888-89)
From Montauk Point (1888, 1888-89)
To Those Who’ve Fail’d (1888, 1888-89)
A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine (1888, 1888-89)
The Bravest Soldiers (1888, 1888-89)
A Font of Type (1888, 1888-89)
As I Sit Writing Here (1888, 1888-89)
My Canary Bird (1888, 1888-89)
Queries to My Seventieth Year (1888, 1888-89)
The Wallabout Martyrs (1888, 1888-89)
The First Dandelion (1888, 1888-89)
America (1888, 1888-89)
Memories (1888, 1888-89)
To-day and Thee (1888, 1888-89)
After the Dazzle of Day (1888, 1888-89)
Abraham Lincoln, Born Feb. 12, 1809 (1888, 1888-89)
Out of May’s Shows Selected (1888, 1888-89)
Halcyon Days (1888, 1888-89)
Fancies at Navesink (1885, 1888-89)
Election Day, November, 1884 (1884, 1888-89)
With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea! (1884, 1888-89)
Death of General Grant (1885, 1888-89)
Red Jacket (from Aloft) (1884, 1888-89)
Washington’s Monument, February, 1885 (1885, 1888-89)
Of That Blithe Throat of Thine (1885, 1888-89)
Broadway (1888, 1888-89)
To Get the Final Lilt of Songs (1888, 1888-89)
Old Salt Kossabone (1888, 1888-89)
The Dead Tenor (1884, 1888-89)
Continuities (1888, 1888-89)
Yonnondio (1887, 1888-89)
Life (1888, 1888-89)
“Going Somewhere” (1887, 1888-89)
Small the Theme of My Chant (1867, 1888-89)
True Conquerors (1888, 1888-89)
The United States to Old World Critics (1888, 1888-89)
The Calming Thought of All (1888, 1888-89)
Thanks in Old Age (1888, 1888-89)
Life and Death (1888, 1888-89)
The Voice of the Rain (1885, 1888-89)
Soon Shall the Winter’s Foil Be Here (1888, 1888-89)
While Not the Past Forgetting (1888, 1888-89)
The Dying Veteran (1887, 1888-89)
Stronger Lessons (1860, 1888-89)
A Prairie Sunset (1888, 1888-89)
Twenty Years (1888, 1888-89)
Orange Buds by Mail from Florida (1888, 1888-89)
Twilight (1887, 1888-89)
You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me (1887, 1888-89)
Not Meagre, Latent Boughs Alone (1887, 1888-89)
The Dead Emperor (1888, 1888-89)
As the Greek’s Signal Flame (1887, 1888-89)
The Dismantled Ship (1888, 1888-89)
Now Precedent Songs, Farewell (1888, 1888-89)
An Evening Lull (1888, 1888-89)
Old Age’s Lambent Peaks (1888, 1889)
After the Supper and Talk (1887, 1888-89)

SECOND ANNEX: GOOD-BYE MY FANCY
Preface Note to 2d Annex
Sail Out for Good, Eidólon Yacht! (1891, 1891-92)
Lingering Last Drops (1891, 1891-92)
Good-Bye my Fancy (1891, 1891-92)
On, On the Same, Ye Jocund Twain! (1891, 1891-92)
My 71st Year (1889, 1891-92)
Apparitions (1891, 1891-92)
The Pallid Wreath (1891, 1891-92)
An Ended Day (1891, 1891-92)
Old Age’s Ship & Crafty Death’s (1890, 1891-92)
To the Pending Year (1889, 1891-92)
Shakspere-Bacon’s Cipher (1891, 1891-92)
Long, Long Hence (1891, 1891-92)
Bravo, Paris Exposition! (1889, 1891-92)
Interpolation Sounds (1888, 1891-92)
To the Sun-set Breeze (1890, 1891-92)
Old Chants (1891, 1891-92)
A Christmas Greeting (1889, 1891-92)
Sounds of the Winter (1891, 1891-92)
A Twilight Song (1890, 1891-92)
When the Full-Grown Poet Came (1876, 1891-92)
Osceola (1890, 1891-92)
A Voice from Death (1889, 1891-92)
A Persian Lesson (1891, 1891-92)
The Commonplace (1891, 1891-92)
“The Rounded Catalogue Divine Complete” (1891, 1891-92)
Mirages (1891, 1891-92)
L. of G.’s Purport (1891, 1891-92)
The Unexpress’d (1891, 1891-92)
Grand Is the Seen (1891, 1891-92)
Unseen Buds (1891, 1891-92)
Good-Bye my Fancy! (1891, 1891-92)
A Backward Glance o’er Travel’d Roads

Complete Prose Works (1892)

Specimen Days
A Happy Hour’s Command
Answer to an Insisting Friend
Genealogy—Van Velsor and Whitman
The Old Whitman and Van Velsor Cemeteries
The Maternal Homestead
Two Old Family Interiors
Paumanok, and My Life on It As Child and Young Man
My First Reading.—Lafayette
Printing Office.—Old Brooklyn
Growth—Health—Work
My Passion for Ferries
Broadway Sights
Omnibus Jaunts and Drivers
Plays and Operas Too
Through Eight Years
Sources of Character—Results—1860
Opening of the Secession War
National Uprising and Volunteering
Contemptuous Feeling
Battle of Bull Run, July, 1861
The Stupor Passes—Something Else Begins
Down at the Front
After First Fredericksburg
Back to Washington
Fifty Hours Left Wounded on the Field
Hospital Scenes and Persons
Patent-Office Hospital
The White House by Moonlight
An Army Hospital Ward
A Connecticut Case
Two Brooklyn Boys
A Secesh Brave
The Wounded from Chancellorsville
A Night Battle, Over a Week Since
Unnamed Remains the Bravest Soldier
Some Specimen Cases
My Preparations for Visits
Ambulance Processions
Bad Wounds—The Young
The Most Inspiriting of All War’s Shows
Battle of Gettysburg
A Cavalry Camp
A New York Soldier
Home-Made Music
Abraham Lincoln
Heated Term
Soldiers and Talks
Death of a Wisconsin Officer
Hospitals Ensemble
A Silent Night Ramble
Spiritual Characters among the Soldiers
Cattle Droves about Washington
Hospital Perplexity
Down at the Front
Paying the Bounties
Rumors, Changes, &c.
Virginia
Summer of 1864
A New Army Organization Fit for America
Death of a Hero
Hospital Scenes.—Incidents
A Yankee Soldier
Union Prisoners South
Deserters
A Glimpse of War’s Hell-Scenes
Gifts—Money—Discrimination
Items from My Note Books
A Case from Second Bull Run
Army Surgeons—Aid Deficiencies
The Blue Everywhere
A Model Hospital
Boys in the Army
Burial of a Lady Nurse
Female Nurses for Soldiers
Southern Escapees
The Capitol by Gas-Light
The Inauguration
Attitude of Foreign Governments during the War
The Weather.—Does It Sympathize with These Times?
Inauguration Ball
Scene at the Capitol
A Yankee Antique
Wounds and Diseases
Death of President Lincoln
Sherman’s Army’s Jubilation—Its Sudden Stoppage
No Good Portrait of Lincoln
Releas’d Union Prisoners from South
Death of a Pennsylvania Soldier
The Armies Returning
The Grand Review
Western Soldiers
A Soldier on Lincoln
Two Brothers, One South, One North
Some Sad Cases Yet
Calhoun’s Real Monument
Hospitals Closing
Typical Soldiers
“Convulsiveness”
Three Years Summ’d Up
The Million Dead, Too, Summ’d Up
The Real War Will Never Get in the Books
An Interregnum Paragraph
New Themes Entered Upon
Entering a Long Farm-Lane
To the Spring and Brook
An Early Summer Reveille
Birds Migrating at Midnight
Bumble-Bees
Cedar-Apples
Summer Sights and Indolencies
Sundown Perfume—Quail—Notes—The Hermit—Thrush
A July Afternoon by the Pond
Locusts and Katydids
The Lesson of a Tree
Autumn Side-Bits
The Sky—Days and Nights—Happiness
Colors—A Contrast
November 8,’76
Crows and Crows
A Winter Day on the Sea-Beach
Sea-Shore Fancies
In Memory of Thomas Paine
A Two Hours’ Ice-Sail
Spring Overtures—Recreations
One of the Human Kinks
An Afternoon Scene
The Gates Opening
The Common Earth, the Soil
Birds and Birds and Birds
Full-Starr’d Nights
Mulleins and Mulleins
Distant Sounds
A Sun-Bath—Nakedness
The Oaks and I
A Quintette
The First Frost—Mems
Three Young Men’s Deaths
February Days
A Meadow Lark
Sundown Lights
Thoughts under an Oak—A Dream
Clover and Hay Perfume
An Unknown
Bird-Whistling
Horse-Mint
Three of Us
Death of William Cullen Bryant
Jaunt up the Hudson
Happiness and Raspberries
A Specimen Tramp Family
Manhattan from the Bay
Human and Heroic New York
Hours for the Soul
Straw-Color’d and Other Psyches
A Night Remembrance
Wild Flowers
A Civility Too Long Neglected
Delaware River—Days and Nights
Scenes on Ferry and River—Last Winter’s Nights
The First Spring Day on Chestnut Street
Up the Hudson to Ulster County
Days at J. B.’s—Turf-Fires—Spring Songs
Meeting a Hermit
An Ulster County Waterfall
Walter Dumont and His Medal
Hudson River Sights
Two City Areas, Certain Hours
Central Park Walks and Talks
A Fine Afternoon, 4 to 6
Departing of the Big Steamers
Two Hours on the Minnesota
Mature Summer Days and Nights
Exposition Building—New City Hall—River Trip
Swallows on the River
Begin a Long Jaunt West
In the Sleeper
Missouri State
Lawrence and Topeka, Kansas
The Prairies—(And an Undeliver’d Speech)
On to Denver—A Frontier Incident
An Hour on Kenosha Summit
An Egotistical “Find”
New Senses—New Joys
Steam-Power, Telegraphs, &c.
America’s Back-Bone
The Parks
Art Features
Denver Impressions
I Turn South—and Then East Again
Unfulfill’d Wants—The Arkansas River
A Silent Little Follower—The Coreopsis
The Prairies and Great Plains in Poetry
The Spanish Peaks—Evening on the Plains
America’s Characteristic Landscape
Earth’s Most Important Stream
Prairie Analogies—The Tree Question
Mississippi Valley Literature
An Interviewer’s Item
The Women of the West
The Silent General
President Hayes’s Speeches
St. Louis Memoranda
Nights on the Mississippi
Upon Our Own Land
Edgar Poe’s Significance
Beethoven’s Septette
A Hint of Wild Nature
Loafing in the Woods
A Contralto Voice
Seeing Niagara to Advantage
Jaunting to Canada
Sunday with the Insane
Reminiscence of Elias Hicks
Grand Native Growth
A Zollverein Between the U. S. and Canada
The St. Lawrence Line
The Savage Saguenay
Capes Eternity and Trinity
Chicoutimi and Ha-ha Bay
The Inhabitants—Good Living
Cedar-Plums Like—Names
Death of Thomas Carlyle
Carlyle from American Points of View
A Couple of Old Friends—A Coleridge Bit
A Week’s Visit to Boston
The Boston of To-day
My Tribute to Four Poets
Millet’s Pictures—Last Items
Birds—and a Caution
Samples of My Common-Place Book
My Native Sand and Salt Once More
Hot Weather New York
“Custer’s Last Rally”
Some Old Acquaintances—Memories
A Discovery of Old Age
A Visit, at the Last, to R. W. Emerson
Other Concord Notations
Boston Common—More of Emerson
An Ossianic Night—Dearest Friends
Only a New Ferry Boat
Death of Longfellow
Starting Newspapers
The Great Unrest of Which We Are Part
By Emerson’s Grave
At Present Writing—Personal
After Trying a Certain Book
Final Confessions—Literary Tests
Nature and Democracy—Morality

Collect
One or Two Index Items
Democratic Vistas
Origins of Attempted Secession
Preface, 1872, to “As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free”
Preface, 1876, to L. of G. and “Two Rivulets,” Centennial Edition
Poetry To-day in America—Shakspere—The Future
A Memorandum at a Venture
Death of Abraham Lincoln
Two Letters

Notes Left Over
Nationality— (And Yet)
Emerson’s Books (The Shadows of Them)
Ventures, on an Old Theme
British Literature
Darwinism— (Then Furthermore)
“Society”
The Tramp and Strike Questions
Democracy in the New World
Foundation Stages—Then Others
General Suffrage, Elections, &c.
Who Gets the Plunder?
Friendship (The Real Article)
Lacks and Wants Yet
Rulers Strictly Out of the Masses
Monuments—the Past and Present
Little or Nothing New, After All
A Lincoln Reminiscence
Freedom
Book-Classes—America’s Literature
Our Real Culmination
An American Problem
The Last Collective Compaction

Pieces in Early Youth
Dough-Face Song
Death in the School-Room
One Wicked Impulse!
The Last Loyalist
Wild Frank’s Return
The Boy Lover
The Child and the Profligate
Lingave’s Temptation
Little Jane
Dumb Kate
Talk to an Art-Union
Blood-Money
Wounded in the House of Friends
Sailing the Mississippi at Midnight

November Boughs
Our Eminent Visitors, Past, Present and Future
The Bible as Poetry
Father Taylor (and Oratory)
The Spanish Element in Our Nationality
What Lurks behind Shakspere’s Historical Plays?
A Thought on Shakspere
Robert Burns as Poet and Person
A Word about Tennyson
Slang in America
An Indian Bureau Reminiscence
Some Diary Notes at Random
Some War Memoranda
Five Thousand Poems
The Old Bowery
Notes to Late English Books
Abraham Lincoln
New Orleans in 1848, Trip up the Mississippi, etc.
Small Memoranda
Last of the War Cases
Elias Hicks, Notes (Such as They Are)
George Fox (and Shakspere)

Good-Bye my Fancy
An Old Man’s Rejoinder
Old Poets
Ship Ahoy!
For Queen Victoria’s Birthday
American National Literature
Gathering the Corn
A Death—Bouquet

Some laggards yet
The Perfect Human Voice
Shakspere for America
“Unassail’d Renown”
Inscription for a Little Book on Giordano Bruno
Splinters
Health (Old Style)
Gay-Heartedness
As in a Swoon
L. of G.
After the Argument
For Us Two, Reader Dear

Memoranda
A World’s Show
New York—the Bay—the Old Name
A Sick Spell
To Be Present Only
“Intestinal Agitation”
“Walt Whitman’s Last ‘Public'”
Ingersoll’s Speech
Feeling Fairly
Old Brooklyn Days
Two Questions
Preface to a Volume
An Engineer’s Obituary
Old Actors, Singers, Shows, &c., in New York
Some Personal and Old-Age Jottings
Out in the Open Again
America’s Bulk Average
Last Saved Items

Supplementary Prose
The Eighteenth Presidency! (1856)
Appendix to Leaves of Grass (1856)
Letter to Walt Whitman
Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson
Note at Beginning, Complete Poems and Prose (1888)
Note at End, Complete Poems and Prose (1888)
May 31, 1889, Leaves of Grass
The Old Man Himself

Walt Whitman’s Last

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