Leaves of Grass

Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass is a clarion call to his country's people to join together in the "crowning growth of the United States". Its patriotic zeal made him a symbol of democracy in his country long before he achieved fame there as a poet.

The intense emotion of Whitman's verse celebrates the regenerative power of nature and the immortal divinity of the human soul. His passionate beliefs are evident throughout this volume - in the radical "I Sing the Body Electric"; the patriotic "I Hear America Singing"; and the romantic "As if a Phantom Caress'd Me".

This collection (the so-called "deathbed" edition of 1892) represents the culmination of Whitman's life's work and contains more than 400 poems.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was perhaps the most influential of all American poets. Both journalist and artist, his controversial collection Leaves of Grass unsettled contemporary critics and enthralled ordinary readers. His experience as a nurse in the American Civil War added new depths to his work and he continued to expand this collection until his death in 1892.