Leaves of Grass and Other Writings (A Norton Critical Edition)
This revised Norton Critical Edition contains the most complete and authoritative collection of Whitman's work available in a paperback student edition. The text of Leaves of Grass is again that of the indispensable "Reader's Comprehensive Edition," edited by Sculley Bradley and Harold W. Blodgett, which is accompanied by revised and expanded explanatory annotations. New to this edition is the full text of the celebrated 1855 first edition of Leaves of Grass, as well as generous excerpts from...
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This revised Norton Critical Edition contains the most complete and authoritative collection of Whitman's work available in a paperback student edition. The text of Leaves of Grass is again that of the indispensable "Reader's Comprehensive Edition," edited by Sculley Bradley and Harold W. Blodgett, which is accompanied by revised and expanded explanatory annotations. New to this edition is the full text of the celebrated 1855 first edition of Leaves of Grass, as well as generous excerpts from Whitman's two prose masterpieces, Democratic Vistas and Specimen Days.
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'd 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 hut 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'd 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.\
