{"product_id":"leaves-of-grass-isbn-9780679783428","title":"Leaves of Grass","description":"Abraham Lincoln read it with approval, but Emily Dickinson described its bold language and themes as \"disgraceful.\" Ralph Waldo Emerson found it \"the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet produced.\" Published at the author's expense on July 4, 1855, Leaves of Grass inaugurated a new voice and style into American letters and gave expression to an optimistic, bombastic vision that took the nation as its subject. Unlike many other editions of Leaves of Grass, which reproduce various short, early versions, this Modern Library Paperback Classics \"Death-bed\" edition presents everything Whitman wrote in its final form, and includes newly commissioned notes.\"Whitman's best poems have that permanent quality of being freshly painted, of not being dulled by the varnish of the years.\"\u003cbr\u003e--Malcolm CowleyBefore the age of thirty-six there was no sign that Walt Whitman would become even a minor literary figure, let alone the major poetic voice of an emerging America. Born in 1819 on Long Island, he was the second son of a carpenter and contractor. His formal schooling ended at age eleven, when he was apprenticed to a printer in Brooklyn. He became a journeyman printer in 1835 and spent the next two decades as a printer, free-lance writer, and editor in New York. In 1855, at his own expense, he published the twelve long poems, without titles, that make up the first edition of Leaves of Grass. The book, with its unprecedented mixture of the mystical and the earthy, was received with puzzlement or silence, except by America's most distinguished writer, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Whitman lost no time in preparing a second edition, adding \"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry\" and nineteen other new poems in 1856. With the third edition (1860), the book had tripled in size. Whitman would go on adding to it and revising it for the rest of his life. Whitman's poetry slowly achieved a wide readership in America and in England. He was praised by Swinburne and Tennyson, and visited by Oscar Wilde. He suffered a stroke in 1873 and spent the remainder of his life in Camden, New Jersey. His final edition of Leaves of Grass appeared in 1892, the year of his death.ONE'S-SELF I SING. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne's-self I sing, a simple separate person,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eYet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOf physiology from top to toe I sing,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eNot physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe Female equally with the Male I sing. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOf Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCheerful, for freest action form'd under the laws divine,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe Modern Man I sing. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAS I PONDER'D IN SILENCE. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs I ponder' in silence,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eReturning upon my poems, considering, lingering long,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eA Phantom arose before me with distrustful aspect,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eTerrible in beauty, age, and power,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe genius of poets of old lands,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAs to me directing like flame its eyes,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWith finger pointing to many immortal songs,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAnd menacing voice, \u003ci\u003eWhat singest thou?\u003c\/i\u003e it said,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eKnow'st thou not there is but one theme for ever-enduring bards?\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAnd that is the theme of War, the fortune of battles,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe making of perfect soldiers. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBe it so,\u003c\/i\u003e then I answer'd,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eI too haughty Shade also sing war, and a longer and greater one than any, \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWaged in my book with varying fortune, with flight, advance and retreat, victory deferr\u0026amp;rsquod and wavering, \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e(Yet methinks certain, or as good as certain, at the last,) the field the world, \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor life and death, for the Body and for the eternal Soul, \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLo, I too am come, chanting the chant of battles, \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI above all promote brave soldiers.\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIN CABIN'D SHIPS AT SEA. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn cabin'd ships at sea,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe boundless blue on every side expanding,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWith whistling winds and music of the waves, the large imperious waves,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eOr some lone bark buoy'd on the dense marine,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWhere joyous full of faith, spreading white sails,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eShe cleaves the ether mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or under many a star at night,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eBy sailors young and old haply will I, a reminiscence of the land, be read, \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn full rapport at last.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eHere are our thoughts, voyagers' thoughts,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eHere not the land, firm land, alone appears, \u003c\/i\u003emay then by them be said,\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe sky o'arches here, we feel the undulating deck beneath our feet,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWe feel the long pulsation, ebb and flow of endless motion,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe tones of unseen mystery, the vague and vast suggestions of the briny world, the liquid-flowing syllables,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe perfume, the faint creaking of the cordage, the melancholy rhythm,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe boundless vista and the horizon far and dim are all here,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAnd this is ocean's poem.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen falter not O book, fulfil your destiny,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eYou not a reminiscence of the land alone, \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou too as a lone bark cleaving the ether, purpos'd I know not whither, yet ever full of faith,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eConsort to every ship that sails, sail you! \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBear forth to them folded my love, (dear mariners, for you I fold it here in every leaf;) \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSpeed on my book! spread your white sails my little bark athwart the imperious waves,\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eChant on, sail on, bear o'er the boundless blue from me to every sea, \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis song for mariners and all their ships.Intro. by William Carlos Williams;  \"Whitman's best poems have that permanent quality of being freshly painted, of not being dulled by...years\"-Malcolm Cowley","brand":"Modern Library","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300665610469,"sku":"NP9780679783428","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780679783428.jpg?v=1767731251","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/leaves-of-grass-isbn-9780679783428","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}