These are the incomparable poems of one of America’s greatest poets - an exuberant, passionate man who loved his country and wrote of it as no other has ever done. Singer, thinker, visionary and citizen extraordinary, this was Walt Whitman. Thoreau called Whitman “probably the greatest democrat that ever lived” and Emerson judged Leaves of Grass as “the most extraordinary piece of
wit and wisdom America has yet contributed.”
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The text of this Signet Classic edition of Leaves of Grass is that of the "Death-Bed” or ninth edition, which was published in 1892. The content and grouping of poems is that authorized by the poet for the final and complete edition of his masterpiece.