PREFATORY NOTICE
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION OF LEAVES OF GRASS
CHANTS DEMOCRATIC: STARTING FROM PAUMANOK AMERICAN FEUILLAGE THE PAST-PRESENT YEARS OF THE UNPERFORMED FLUX TO WORKING MEN SONG OF THE BROAD-AXE ANTECEDENTS SALUT AU MONDE A BROADWAY PAGEANT OLD IRELAND BOSTON TOWN FRANCE, THE EIGHTEENTH YEAR OF THESE STATES EUROPE, THE SEVENTY-SECOND AND SEVENTY-THIRD YEARS OF THESE STATES TO A FOILED REVOLTER OR REVOLTRESS
DRUM TAPS:
MANHATTAN ARMING
1861
THE UPRISING
BEAT! BEAT! DRUMS!
SONG OF THE BANNER AT DAYBREAK
THE BIVOUAC'S FLAME
BIVOUAC ON A MOUNTAIN SIDE
CITY OF SHIPS
VIGIL ON THE FIELD
THE FLAG
THE WOUNDED
A SIGHT IN CAMP
A GRAVE
THE DRESSER
A LETTER FROM CAMP
WAR DREAMS
THE VETERAN'S VISION
O TAN-FACED PRAIRIE BOY
MANHATTAN FACES
OVER THE CARNAGE
THE MOTHER OF ALL
CAMPS OF GREEN
DIRGE FOR TWO VETERANS
SURVIVORS
HYMN OF DEAD SOLDIERS
SPIRIT WHOSE WORK IS DONE
RECONCILIATION
AFTER THE WAR
WALT WHITMAN: ASSIMILATIONS A WORD OUT OF THE SEA CROSSING BROOKLYN FERRY NIGHT AND DEATH ELEMENTAL DRIFTS WONDERS MIRACLES VISAGES THE DARK SIDE MUSIC WHEREFORE? QUESTIONABLE SONG AT SUNSET LONGINGS FOR HOME APPEARANCES THE FRIEND MEETING AGAIN A DREAM PARTING FRIENDS TO A STRANGER OTHER LANDS ENVY THE CITY OF FRIENDS OUT OF THE CROWD AMONG THE MULTITUDE
LEAVES OF GRASS: PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S FUNERAL HYMN O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! (FOR THE DEATH OF LINCOLN) PIONEERS! O PIONEERS TO THE SAYERS OF WORDS VOICES WHOSOEVER BEGINNERS TO A PUPIL LINKS THE WATERS TO THE STATES TEARS A SHIP GREATNESSES THE POET BURIAL THIS COMPOST DESPAIRING CRIES THE CITY DEAD-HOUSE TO ONE SHORTLY TO DIE UNNAMED LANDS SIMILITUDE THE SQUARE DEIFIC
SONGS OF PARTING: SINGERS AND POETS TO A HISTORIAN FIT AUDIENCE SINGING IN SPRING LOVE OF COMRADES PULSE OF MY LIFE AUXILIARIES REALITIES NEARING DEPARTURE POETS TO COME CENTURIES HENCE SO LONG!
POSTSCRIPT
PREFATORY NOTICE.
During the summer of 1867 I had the opportunity (which I had often wished for) of expressing in print my estimate and admiration of the works of the American poet Walt Whitman.[1] Like a stone dropped into a pond, an article of that sort may spread out its concentric circles of consequences. One of these is the invitation which I have received to edit a selection from Whitman's writings; virtually the first sample of his work ever published in England, and offering the first tolerably fair chance he has had of making his way with English readers on his own showing. Hitherto, such readers—except the small percentage of them to whom it has happened to come across the poems in some one of their American editions—have picked acquaintance with them only through the medium of newspaper extracts and criticisms, mostly short-sighted, sneering, and depreciatory, and rather intercepting than forwarding the candid construction which people might be willing to put upon the poems, alike in their beauties and their aberrations. Some English critics, no doubt, have been more discerning—as W. J. Fox, of old, in the Dispatch, the writer of the notice in the Leader, and of late two in the Pall Mall Gazette and the London Review;[2] but these have been the exceptions among us, the great majority of the reviewers presenting that happy and familiar critical combination—scurrility and superciliousness.
[Footnote 1: See The Chronicle for 6th July 1867, article Walt Whitman's Poems.]
[Footnote 2: Since this Prefatory Notice was written [in 1868], another eulogistic review of Whitman has appeared—that by Mr. Robert Buchanan, in the Broadway.]
As it was my lot to set down so recently several of the considerations which seem to me most essential and most obvious in regard to Whitman's writings, I can scarcely now recur to the subject without either repeating something of what I then said, or else leaving unstated some points of principal importance. I shall therefore adopt the simplest course—that of summarising the critical remarks in my former article; after which, I shall leave without further development (ample as is the amount of development most of them would claim) the particular topics there glanced at, and shall proceed to some other phases of the subject.
Whitman republished in 1867 his complete poetical works in one moderate- sized volume, consisting of the whole Leaves of Grass, with a sort of supplement thereto named Songs before Parting,[3] and of the Drum Taps, with its Sequel. It has been intimated that he does not expect to write any more poems, unless it might be in expression of the religious side of man's nature. However, one poem on the last American harvest sown and reaped by those who had been soldiers in the great war, has already appeared since the volume in question, and has been republished in England.
[Footnote 3: In a copy
