Leaves of Grass: Preface to the Original Edition, 1855Trübner & Company, 1881 - 31 pages |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
action afterward American bard American Remittances artist beauty Birkenhead blood blue breadth body and soul brain breed candor CARRIAGE FREE character citizen coast stretches longer Currency Notes D.Sc death Demy 8vo divine duly earth embouchure essay eternal tendencies eyesight faith fluency forms genius German Terrace grand opera grandeur GRASS BY WALT greatest poet bring individual inure JOHN MACLEAY PEACOCK Kaines known universe knows Kosmos laws LEAVES OF GRASS less light look master mechanic or farmer ment middle age nature never old-world open air ORIGINAL EDITION ornaments pass passion past and present perceive perfect poem persons philosophy poetic Positivism Postage Stamps PREFACE prostitute prudence realize rest rhyme riches and privilege sake self-esteem shapes spirit stand stars states-the Sunday Question superior sure sweet things to-day TRÜBNER Truth unspeakably vast WALT WHITMAN Walter Lewin war and peace Whiteley woman women young mechanic
Popular passages
Page 14 - But to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside is the flawless triumph of art.
Page 14 - The soul has that measureless pride which consists in never acknowledging any lessons or deductions but its own. But it has sympathy as measureless as its pride, and the one balances the other, and neither can stretch too far while it stretches in company with the other.
Page 11 - ... income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families...
Page 27 - ... knows that the young man who composedly periled his life and lost it has done exceeding well for himself, while the man who has not periled his life and retains it to old age in riches and ease has perhaps achieved nothing for himself worth mentioning...
Page 24 - What is the wisdom that fills the thinness of a year, or seventy or eighty years — to the wisdom spaced out by ages, and coming back at a certain time with strong reinforcements and rich presents, and the clear faces of weddingguests as far as you can look, in every direction, running gaily toward you? Only the soul is of itself — all else has reference to what ensues.
Page 29 - The English language befriends the grand American expression ... it is brawny enough and limber and full enough. On the tough stock of a race who through all change of circumstance was never without the idea of political liberty, which is the animus of all liberty, it has attracted the terms of daintier and gayer and subtler and more elegant tongues. It is the powerful language of resistance ... it is the dialect of common sense. It is the speech of the proud and melancholy races and of all who aspire....
Page 15 - ... health or heat or snow has and be as regardless of observation. What I experience or portray shall go from my composition without a shred of my composition. You shall stand by my side and look in the mirror with me. The old red blood and stainless gentility of great poets will be proved by their unconstraint. A heroic person walks at his ease through and out of that custom or precedent or authority that suits him not.
Page 21 - ... actions with theirs. The poets of the kosmos advance through all interpositions and coverings and turmoils and stratagems to first principles. They are of use — they dissolve poverty from its need, and riches from its conceit.
Page 3 - ... the slough still sticks to opinions and manners and literature, while the life which served its requirements has passed into the new life of the new forms — perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and sleeping rooms of the house...
Page 22 - Of ornaments to a work nothing outre can be allowed — but those ornaments can be allowed that conform to the perfect facts of the open air, and that flow out of the nature of the work, and come irrepressibly from it, and are necessary to the completion of the work. Most works are most beautiful without ornament.