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.

Table of Contents:
Inscriptions
Starting from Paumanok
Song of Myself
Children of Adam
Calamus
Salut Au Monde!
Song of the Open Road
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Song of the Answerer
Our Old Feuillage
A Song of Joys
Song of the Broad-Axe
Song of the Exposition
Song of the Redwood-Tree
A Song for Occupations
A Song of the Rolling Earth
Birds of Passage
A Broadway Pagent
Sea-Drift
By the Roadside
Drum-Taps
Memories of President Lincoln
By Blue Ontario's Shore
Autumn Rivulets
Proud Music of the Strom
Passage to India
Prayer of Columbus
The Sleepers
To Think of Time
Whispers of Heavenly Death
Thou Mother with Thy Equal Brood
From Noon to Starry Night
Songs of Parting
Sands at Seventy
Goodbye My Fancy
Old Age Echoes
Uncollected and Rejected Poems
Notes