With an Introduction and Bibliography by Stephen Matterson, Trinity College, Dublin. Walt Whitman´s verse gave the poetry of America a distinctive national voice. It reflects the unique vitality of the new nation, the vastness of the land and the emergence of a sometimes troubled consciousness, communicated in language and idiom regarded by many at the time as shocking. Whitman´s poems are organic and free flowing, fit into no previously defined genre and skilfully combine autobiographical, sociological and religious themes with lyrical sensuality. His verse is a fitting celebration of a new breed of American and includes ´Song of Myself´, ´Crossing Brooklyn Ferry´, the celebratory ´Passage to India´, and his fine elegy for the assassinated President Lincoln, ´When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom´d´.