Library of Congress

The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth, have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.

Walt
Whitman

Prose Works

Walt Whitman

The Good Gray Poet also contributed to the greatest prose of American letters with his war diaries, Prefaces and Democratic Vistas in this complete Prose Works, the companion volume to Bartleby.com’s Leaves of Grass.

Bibliographic Record

PHILADELPHIA: DAVID MCKAY, 1892
NEW YORK: BARTLEBY.COM, 2000

I. Specimen Days A Happy Hour’s Command Answer to an Insisting Friend Genealogy—Van Velsor and Whitman The Old Whitman and Van Velsor Cemeteries The Maternal Homestead Two Old Family Interiors Paumanok, and My Life on It as Child and Young Man My First Reading—Lafayette Printing Office—Old Brooklyn Growth—Health—Work My Passion for Ferries Broadway Sights Omnibus Jaunts and Drivers Plays and Operas Too Through Eight Years Sources of Character—Results—1860 Opening of the Secession War National Uprising and Volunteering Contemptuous Feeling Battle of Bull Run, July, 1861 The Stupor Passes—Something Else Begins Down at the Front After First Fredericksburg Back to Washington Fifty Hours Left Wounded on the Field Hospital Scenes and Persons Patent-Office Hospital The White House by Moonlight An Army Hospital Ward A Connecticut Case Two Brooklyn Boys A Secesh Brave The Wounded from Chancellorsville A Night Battle, over a Week Since Unnamed Remains the Bravest Soldier Some Specimen Cases My Preparations for Visits Ambulance Processions Bad Wounds—The Young The Most Inspiriting of All War’s Shows Battle of Gettysburg A Cavalry Camp A New York Soldier Home-Made Music Abraham Lincoln Heated Term Soldiers and Talks Death of a Wisconsin Officer Hospitals Ensemble A Silent Night Ramble Spiritual Characters among the Soldiers Cattle Droves about Washington Hospital Perplexity Down at the Front Paying the Bounties Rumors, Changes, &c. Virginia Summer of 1864 A New Army Organization Fit for America Death of a Hero Hospital Scenes—Incidents A Yankee Soldier Union Prisoners South Deserters A Glimpse of War’s Hell Scenes Gifts—Money—Discrimination Items from My Note Books A Case from Second Bull Run Army Surgeons—Aid Deficiencies The Blue Everywhere A Model Hospital Boys in the Army Burial of a Lady Nurse Female Nurses for Soldiers Southern Escapees The Capitol by Gas-Light The Inauguration Attitude of Foreign Governments During the War The Weather—Does It Sympathize with These Times? Inauguration Ball Scene at the Capitol A Yankee Antique Wounds and Diseases Death of President Lincoln Sherman’s Army’s Jubilation—Its Sudden Stoppage No Good Portrait of Lincoln Releas’d Union Prisoners from South Death of a Pennsylvania Soldier The Armies Returning The Grand Review Western Soldiers A Soldier on Lincoln Two Brothers, One South, One North Some Sad Cases Yet Calhoun’s Real Monument Hospitals Closing Typical Soldiers “Convulsiveness” Three Years Summ’d Up The Million Dead, Too, Summ’d Up The Real War Will Never Get in the Books An Interregnum Paragraph New Themes Entered Upon Entering a Long Farm-Lane To the Spring and Brook An Early Summer Reveille Birds Migrating at Midnight Bumble-Bees Cedar-Apples Summer Sights and Indolencies Sundown Perfume—Quail-Notes—The Hermit-Thrush A July Afternoon by the Pond Locusts and Katydids The Lesson of a Tree Autumn Side-Bits The Sky—Days and Nights—Happiness Colors—A Contrast November 8, ’76 Crows and Crows A Winter Day on the Sea-Beach Sea-Shore Fancies In Memory of Thomas Paine A Two Hours’ Ice-Sail Spring Overtures—Recreations One of the Human Kinks An Afternoon Scene The Gates Opening The Common Earth, the Soil Birds and Birds and Birds Full-Starr’d Nights Mulleins and Mulleins Distant Sounds A Sun-Bath—Nakedness The Oaks and I A Quintette The First Frost—Mems Three Young Men’s Deaths February Days A Meadow Lark Sundown Lights Thoughts Under an Oak—A Dream Clover and Hay Perfume An Unknown Bird-Whistling Horse-Mint Three of Us Death of William Cullen Bryant Jaunt up the Hudson Happiness and Raspberries A Specimen Tramp Family Manhattan from the Bay Human and Heroic New York Hours for the Soul Straw-Color’d and Other Psyches A Night Remembrance Wild Flowers A Civility Too Long Neglected Delaware River—Days and Nights Scenes on Ferry and River—Last Winter’s Nights The First Spring Day on Chestnut Street Up the Hudson to Ulster County Days at J. B.’s—Turf-Fires—Spring Songs Meeting a Hermit An Ulster County Waterfall Walter Dumont and His Medal Hudson River Sights Two City Areas, Certain Hours Central Park Walks and Talks A Fine Afternoon, 4 to 6 Departing of the Big Steamers Two Hours on the Minnesota Mature Summer Days and Nights Exposition Building—New City Hall—River Trip Swallows on the River Begin a Long Jaunt West In the Sleeper Missouri State Lawrence and Topeka, Kansas The Prairies On to Denver—A Frontier Incident An Hour on Kenosha Summit An Egotistical “Find” New Senses—New Joys Steam-Power, Telegraphs, &c. America’s Back-Bone The Parks Art Features Denver Impressions I Turn South—And Then East Again Unfulfill’d Wants—The Arkansas River A Silent Little Follower—The Coreopsis The Prairies and Great Plains in Poetry The Spanish Peaks—Evening on the Plains America’s Characteristic Landscape Earth’s Most Important Stream Prairie Analogies—The Tree Question Mississippi Valley Literature An Interviewer’s Item The Women of the West The Silent General President Hayes’s Speeches St. Louis Memoranda Nights on the Mississippi Upon Our Own Land Edgar Poe’s Significance Beethoven’s Septette A Hint of Wild Nature Loafing in the Woods A Contralto Voice Seeing Niagara to Advantage Jaunting to Canada Sunday with the Insane Reminiscence of Elias Hicks Grand Native Growth A Zollverein Between the U. S. and Canada The St. Lawrence Line The Savage Saguenay Capes Eternity and Trinity Chicoutimi and Ha-Ha Bay The Inhabitants—Good Living Cedar-Plums Like—Names Death of Thomas Carlyle Carlyle from American Points of View A Couple of Old Friends—A Coleridge Bit A Week’s Visit to Boston The Boston of To-Day My Tribute to Four Poets Millet’s Pictures—Last Items Birds—And a Caution Samples of My Common-Place Book My Native Sand and Salt Once More Hot Weather New York “Custer’s Last Rally” Some Old Acquaintances—Memories A Discovery of Old Age A Visit, at the Last, to R. W. Emerson Other Concord Notations Boston Common—More of Emerson An Ossianic Night—Dearest Friends Only a New Ferry Boat Death of Longfellow Starting Newspapers The Great Unrest of Which We Are Part By Emerson’s Grave At Present Writing—Personal After Trying a Certain Book Final Confessions—Literary Tests Nature and Democracy—Morality
II. Collect One or Two Index Items Democratic Vistas: Paras. 1–29 Democratic Vistas: Paras. 30–59 Democratic Vistas: Paras. 60–89 Democratic Vistas: Paras. 90–119 Democratic Vistas: Paras. 120–132 Origins of Attempted Secession Preface, 1855, to First Issue of “Leaves of Grass,” Brooklyn, N.Y. Preface, 1872, To “As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free” Preface, 1876, To the Two-Volume Centennial Edition of L. of G. and “Two Rivulets” Poetry To-Day in America—Shakspere—The Future A Memorandum at a Venture Death of Abraham Lincoln Two Letters
III. Notes Left Over Nationality—(and Yet) Emerson’s Books, (the Shadows of Them) Ventures, on an Old Theme British Literature Darwinism—(then Furthermore) “Society” The Tramp and Strike Questions Democracy in the New World, Foundation Stages—Then Others General Suffrage, Elections, &c. Who Gets the Plunder? Friendship, (the Real Article) Lacks and Wants Yet Rulers Strictly out of the Masses Monuments—The Past and Present Little or Nothing New, after All A Lincoln Reminiscence Freedom Book-Classes—America’s Literature Our Real Culmination An American Problem The Last Collective Compaction
IV. Pieces in Early Youth Dough-Face Song Death in the School-Room (a Fact) One Wicked Impulse! The Last Loyalist Wild Frank’s Return The Boy Lover The Child and the Profligate Lingave’s Temptation Little Jane Dumb Kate Talk to an Art-Union Blood-Money Wounded in the House of Friends Sailing the Mississippi at Midnight
V. November Boughs Our Eminent Visitors The Bible as Poetry Father Taylor (and Oratory) The Spanish Element in Our Nationality What Lurks Behind Shakspere’s Historical Plays? A Thought on Shakspere Robert Burns as Poet and Person A Word about Tennyson Slang in America An Indian Bureau Reminiscence Some Diary Notes at Random Some War Memoranda Five Thousand Poems The Old Bowery Notes to Late English Books Abraham Lincoln New Orleans in 1848 Small Memoranda Last of the War Cases Elias Hicks: Portrait in Old Age Notes (Such as They Are) Founded on Elias Hicks George Fox (and Shakspere)

Prose Works

Walt Whitman

Contents

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