dots-menu
×
Home  »  Prose Works
Prose Works
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.
1855 Preface to Leaves of Grass
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

Contents

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

I. Specimen Days

  1. A Happy Hour’s Command
  2. Answer to an Insisting Friend
  3. Genealogy—Van Velsor and Whitman
  4. The Old Whitman and Van Velsor Cemeteries
  5. The Maternal Homestead
  6. Two Old Family Interiors
  7. Paumanok, and My Life on It as Child and Young Man
  8. My First Reading—Lafayette
  9. Printing Office—Old Brooklyn
  10. Growth—Health—Work
  11. My Passion for Ferries
  12. Broadway Sights
  13. Omnibus Jaunts and Drivers
  14. Plays and Operas Too
  15. Through Eight Years
  16. Sources of Character—Results—1860
  17. Opening of the Secession War
  18. National Uprising and Volunteering
  19. Contemptuous Feeling
  20. Battle of Bull Run, July, 1861
  21. The Stupor Passes—Something Else Begins
  22. Down at the Front
  23. After First Fredericksburg
  24. Back to Washington
  25. Fifty Hours Left Wounded on the Field
  26. Hospital Scenes and Persons
  27. Patent-Office Hospital
  28. The White House by Moonlight
  29. An Army Hospital Ward
  30. A Connecticut Case
  31. Two Brooklyn Boys
  32. A Secesh Brave
  33. The Wounded from Chancellorsville
  34. A Night Battle, over a Week Since
  35. Unnamed Remains the Bravest Soldier
  36. Some Specimen Cases
  37. My Preparations for Visits
  38. Ambulance Processions
  39. Bad Wounds—The Young
  40. The Most Inspiriting of All War’s Shows
  41. Battle of Gettysburg
  42. A Cavalry Camp
  43. A New York Soldier
  44. Home-Made Music
  45. Abraham Lincoln
  46. Heated Term
  47. Soldiers and Talks
  48. Death of a Wisconsin Officer
  49. Hospitals Ensemble
  50. A Silent Night Ramble
  51. Spiritual Characters among the Soldiers
  52. Cattle Droves about Washington
  53. Hospital Perplexity
  54. Down at the Front
  55. Paying the Bounties
  56. Rumors, Changes, &c.
  57. Virginia
  58. Summer of 1864
  59. A New Army Organization Fit for America
  60. Death of a Hero
  61. Hospital Scenes—Incidents
  62. A Yankee Soldier
  63. Union Prisoners South
  64. Deserters
  65. A Glimpse of War’s Hell Scenes
  66. Gifts—Money—Discrimination
  67. Items from My Note Books
  68. A Case from Second Bull Run
  69. Army Surgeons—Aid Deficiencies
  70. The Blue Everywhere
  71. A Model Hospital
  72. Boys in the Army
  73. Burial of a Lady Nurse
  74. Female Nurses for Soldiers
  75. Southern Escapees
  76. The Capitol by Gas-Light
  77. The Inauguration
  78. Attitude of Foreign Governments During the War
  79. The Weather—Does It Sympathize with These Times?
  80. Inauguration Ball
  81. Scene at the Capitol
  82. A Yankee Antique
  83. Wounds and Diseases
  84. Death of President Lincoln
  85. Sherman’s Army’s Jubilation—Its Sudden Stoppage
  86. No Good Portrait of Lincoln
  87. Releas’d Union Prisoners from South
  88. Death of a Pennsylvania Soldier
  89. The Armies Returning
  90. The Grand Review
  91. Western Soldiers
  92. A Soldier on Lincoln
  93. Two Brothers, One South, One North
  94. Some Sad Cases Yet
  95. Calhoun’s Real Monument
  96. Hospitals Closing
  97. Typical Soldiers
  98. Convulsiveness
  99. Three Years Summ’d Up
  100. The Million Dead, Too, Summ’d Up
  101. The Real War Will Never Get in the Books
  102. An Interregnum Paragraph
  103. New Themes Entered Upon
  104. Entering a Long Farm-Lane
  105. To the Spring and Brook
  106. An Early Summer Reveille
  107. Birds Migrating at Midnight
  108. Bumble-Bees
  109. Cedar-Apples
  110. Summer Sights and Indolencies
  111. Sundown Perfume—Quail-Notes—The Hermit-Thrush
  112. A July Afternoon by the Pond
  113. Locusts and Katydids
  114. The Lesson of a Tree
  115. Autumn Side-Bits
  116. The Sky—Days and Nights—Happiness
  117. Colors—A Contrast
  118. November 8, ’76
  119. Crows and Crows
  120. A Winter Day on the Sea-Beach
  121. Sea-Shore Fancies
  122. In Memory of Thomas Paine
  123. A Two Hours’ Ice-Sail
  124. Spring Overtures—Recreations
  125. One of the Human Kinks
  126. An Afternoon Scene
  127. The Gates Opening
  128. The Common Earth, the Soil
  129. Birds and Birds and Birds
  130. Full-Starr’d Nights
  131. Mulleins and Mulleins
  132. Distant Sounds
  133. A Sun-Bath—Nakedness
  134. The Oaks and I
  135. A Quintette
  136. The First Frost—Mems
  137. Three Young Men’s Deaths
  138. February Days
  139. A Meadow Lark
  140. Sundown Lights
  141. Thoughts Under an Oak—A Dream
  142. Clover and Hay Perfume
  143. An Unknown
  144. Bird-Whistling
  145. Horse-Mint
  146. Three of Us
  147. Death of William Cullen Bryant
  148. Jaunt up the Hudson
  149. Happiness and Raspberries
  150. A Specimen Tramp Family
  151. Manhattan from the Bay
  152. Human and Heroic New York
  153. Hours for the Soul
  154. Straw-Color’d and Other Psyches
  155. A Night Remembrance
  156. Wild Flowers
  157. A Civility Too Long Neglected
  158. Delaware River—Days and Nights
  159. Scenes on Ferry and River—Last Winter’s Nights
  160. The First Spring Day on Chestnut Street
  161. Up the Hudson to Ulster County
  162. Days at J. B.’s—Turf-Fires—Spring Songs
  163. Meeting a Hermit
  164. An Ulster County Waterfall
  165. Walter Dumont and His Medal
  166. Hudson River Sights
  167. Two City Areas, Certain Hours
  168. Central Park Walks and Talks
  169. A Fine Afternoon, 4 to 6
  170. Departing of the Big Steamers
  171. Two Hours on the Minnesota
  172. Mature Summer Days and Nights
  173. Exposition Building—New City Hall—River Trip
  174. Swallows on the River
  175. Begin a Long Jaunt West
  176. In the Sleeper
  177. Missouri State
  178. Lawrence and Topeka, Kansas
  179. The Prairies
  180. On to Denver—A Frontier Incident
  181. An Hour on Kenosha Summit
  182. An Egotistical “Find
  183. New Senses—New Joys
  184. Steam-Power, Telegraphs, &c.
  185. America’s Back-Bone
  186. The Parks
  187. Art Features
  188. Denver Impressions
  189. I Turn South—And Then East Again
  190. Unfulfill’d Wants—The Arkansas River
  191. A Silent Little Follower—The Coreopsis
  192. The Prairies and Great Plains in Poetry
  193. The Spanish Peaks—Evening on the Plains
  194. America’s Characteristic Landscape
  195. Earth’s Most Important Stream
  196. Prairie Analogies—The Tree Question
  197. Mississippi Valley Literature
  198. An Interviewer’s Item
  199. The Women of the West
  200. The Silent General
  201. President Hayes’s Speeches
  202. St. Louis Memoranda
  203. Nights on the Mississippi
  204. Upon Our Own Land
  205. Edgar Poe’s Significance
  206. Beethoven’s Septette
  207. A Hint of Wild Nature
  208. Loafing in the Woods
  209. A Contralto Voice
  210. Seeing Niagara to Advantage
  211. Jaunting to Canada
  212. Sunday with the Insane
  213. Reminiscence of Elias Hicks
  214. Grand Native Growth
  215. A Zollverein Between the U. S. and Canada
  216. The St. Lawrence Line
  217. The Savage Saguenay
  218. Capes Eternity and Trinity
  219. Chicoutimi and Ha-Ha Bay
  220. The Inhabitants—Good Living
  221. Cedar-Plums Like—Names
  222. Death of Thomas Carlyle
  223. Carlyle from American Points of View
  224. A Couple of Old Friends—A Coleridge Bit
  225. A Week’s Visit to Boston
  226. The Boston of To-Day
  227. My Tribute to Four Poets
  228. Millet’s Pictures—Last Items
  229. Birds—And a Caution
  230. Samples of My Common-Place Book
  231. My Native Sand and Salt Once More
  232. Hot Weather New York
  233. Custer’s Last Rally
  234. Some Old Acquaintances—Memories
  235. A Discovery of Old Age
  236. A Visit, at the Last, to R. W. Emerson
  237. Other Concord Notations
  238. Boston Common—More of Emerson
  239. An Ossianic Night—Dearest Friends
  240. Only a New Ferry Boat
  241. Death of Longfellow
  242. Starting Newspapers
  243. The Great Unrest of Which We Are Part
  244. By Emerson’s Grave
  245. At Present Writing—Personal
  246. After Trying a Certain Book
  247. Final Confessions—Literary Tests
  248. Nature and Democracy—Morality
II. Collect

  1. One or Two Index Items
  2. Democratic Vistas: Paras. 1–29
  3. Democratic Vistas: Paras. 30–59
  4. Democratic Vistas: Paras. 60–89
  5. Democratic Vistas: Paras. 90–119
  6. Democratic Vistas: Paras. 120–132
  7. Origins of Attempted Secession
  8. Preface, 1855, to First Issue of “Leaves of Grass,” Brooklyn, N.Y.
  9. Preface, 1872, To “As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free
  10. Preface, 1876, To the Two-Volume Centennial Edition of L. of G. and “Two Rivulets
  11. Poetry To-Day in America—Shakspere—The Future
  12. A Memorandum at a Venture
  13. Death of Abraham Lincoln
  14. Two Letters
III. Notes Left Over

  1. Nationality—(and Yet)
  2. Emerson’s Books, (the Shadows of Them)
  3. Ventures, on an Old Theme
  4. British Literature
  5. Darwinism—(then Furthermore)
  6. Society
  7. The Tramp and Strike Questions
  8. Democracy in the New World,
  9. Foundation Stages—Then Others
  10. General Suffrage, Elections, &c.
  11. Who Gets the Plunder?
  12. Friendship, (the Real Article)
  13. Lacks and Wants Yet
  14. Rulers Strictly out of the Masses
  15. Monuments—The Past and Present
  16. Little or Nothing New, after All
  17. A Lincoln Reminiscence
  18. Freedom
  19. Book-Classes—America’s Literature
  20. Our Real Culmination
  21. An American Problem
  22. The Last Collective Compaction
IV. Pieces in Early Youth

  1. Dough-Face Song
  2. Death in the School-Room (a Fact)
  3. One Wicked Impulse!
  4. The Last Loyalist
  5. Wild Frank’s Return
  6. The Boy Lover
  7. The Child and the Profligate
  8. Lingave’s Temptation
  9. Little Jane
  10. Dumb Kate
  11. Talk to an Art-Union
  12. Blood-Money
  13. Wounded in the House of Friends
  14. Sailing the Mississippi at Midnight
V. November Boughs

  1. Our Eminent Visitors
  2. The Bible as Poetry
  3. Father Taylor (and Oratory)
  4. The Spanish Element in Our Nationality
  5. What Lurks Behind Shakspere’s Historical Plays?
  6. A Thought on Shakspere
  7. Robert Burns as Poet and Person
  8. A Word about Tennyson
  9. Slang in America
  10. An Indian Bureau Reminiscence
  11. Some Diary Notes at Random
  12. Some War Memoranda
  13. Five Thousand Poems
  14. The Old Bowery
  15. Notes to Late English Books
  16. Abraham Lincoln
  17. New Orleans in 1848
  18. Small Memoranda
  19. Last of the War Cases
  20. Elias Hicks: Portrait in Old Age
  21. Notes (Such as They Are) Founded on Elias Hicks
  22. George Fox (and Shakspere)