In response to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s call for the United States to have its own unique poet, Walt Whitman rose to the challenge to create what would ultimately be his most profound work. Taking its title from the colloquial term ‘grass’, meaning a work of minor value, Whitman’s ‘Leaves of Grass’ is anything but that. Over his lifetime Whitman would continue to expand and revise his most famous book up until his death in 1892. Here in this volume we reproduce the short collection of twelve poems of the very first edition, originally published in 1855.