III.

Later Editions

Stimulated by a letter of congratulations from the eminent New England essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, Whitman hastily put together another edition of Leaves of Grass (1856), with revisions and additions; he would continue to revise the collection throughout his life. The most significant 1856 poem is “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” in which the poet vicariously joins his readers and all past and future ferry passengers. In the third edition (1860), Whitman began to give his poetry a more allegorical structure (see Allegory). In “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” a mockingbird (the voice of nature) teaches a little boy (the future poet) the meaning of death. Italian opera, of which Whitman was extremely fond, strongly influenced the music of this poem. Two new clusters of poems, “Children of Adam” and “Calamus,” deal with sexual love and male friendship.

Drum-Taps (1865, later added to the 1867 edition of Leaves) reflects Whitman’s deepening awareness of the significance of the American Civil War (1861-1865) and the hope for reconciliation between North and South. Sequel to Drum-Taps (1866) contains “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” the great elegy for President Abraham Lincoln, and one of Whitman’s most popular works, “O Captain! My Captain!””Passage to India” (1871) used modern communications and transportation as symbols for its transcendent vision of the union of East and West and of the soul with God.

Finally, in 1881, Whitman arranged his poems to his satisfaction, but he continued to add new poems to the various editions of Leaves of Grass until the final version was produced in 1892. A posthumous cluster, “Old Age Echoes,” appeared in 1897. All of his poems were included in the definitive “Reader’s Edition” of Leaves of Grass (1965), edited by Harold W. Blodgett and Sculley Bradley.