Ebook Leaves of Grass

This edition of leaves OF grass, presenting, as it does, many new features, requires a word of explanation. The early editions are now almost entirely out of the market, a fact of no great importance to the reader, were it not that they are sought for more because of their contents than their imprint. Perhaps no author was given more to change than Walt Whit man. Many poems or parts of poems have been either altered, or discarded for a time to appear in a new form in later editions, and not a few have disappeared entirely. His poems appeal to the student rather than to the casual reader, and this edition has been prepared with the clearest recognition of that fact. It aims to give the growing as well as the grown Whitman. The accepted readings are given in the text. Each poem has been carefully compared with that appearing in all previous editions, and the changes have been inserted in footnotes. The lines have been numbered, by which means the reader can readily compare the various readings and mark their transformations. Under the head of Gathered Leaves I have collected such poems as have been dropped by the way, some of which appeared in only one, and others in several editions.