"
PREFACE, 1876 _To the two-volume Centennial Edition of_ Leaves of
Grass _and_ Two Rivulets.
At the eleventh hour, under grave illness, I gather up the pieces of
prose and poetry left over since publishing, a while since, my first
and main volume, "Leaves or Grass"--pieces, here, some new, some old--
nearly all of them (sombre as many are, making this almost death's
book) composed in by-gone atmospheres of perfect health--and preceded
by the freshest collection, the little "Two Rivulets," now send them
out, embodied in the present melange, partly as my contribution and
outpouring to celebrate, in some sort, the feature of the time, the
first centennial of our New World nationality--and then as chyle and
nutriment to that moral, indissoluble union, equally representing all,
and the mother of many coming centennials.
And e'en for flush and proof of our America--for reminder, just as
much, or more, in moods of towering pride and joy, I keep my special
chants of death and immortality[33] to stamp the coloring-finish of
all, present and past. For terminus and temperer to all, they were
originally written; and that shall be their office at the last.
For some reason--not explainable or definite to my own mind, yet
secretly pleasing and satisfactory to it--I have not hesitated to
embody in, and run through the volume, two altogether distinct veins,
or strata--politics for one, and for the other, the pensive thought of
immortality. Thus, too, the prose and poetic, the dual forms of
the present book.
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