A reading of Walt Whitman's poem "As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life." The reading is from the earliest published version of the poem, in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass, where it is titled "Leaves of Grass #1." The full text of that version is here; the final revision of the poem is here.

The best place to find Whitman's poetry online (or anything about him at all) remains the Whitman Archive, and you can find every edition of Leaves of Grass here (as plain text downloads) and here (facsimiles of the original editions).

While there are hundreds of editions of Whitman's poetry in print, the best editions for me are Gary Schmidgall's Walt Whitman: Selected Poems 1855-1892, which present his best poems in their earliest published form (this is the book I am reading from here); the second includes the first and last editions of Leaves of Grass, along with a huge selection of Whitman's prose.

Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to [email protected].

I assume that the small amount of work presented in each episode constitutes fair use. Publishers, authors, or other copyright holders who would prefer to not have their work presented here can also email me at [email protected], and I will remove the episode immediately.