POETRY: Walt Whitman AMONG THE MULTITUDE

Among the men and women the multitude,

I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs,
Acknowledging none else, not parent, wife, husband, brother, child,
any nearer than I am,
Some are baffled, but that one is not--that one knows me.

Ah lover and perfect equal,
I meant that you should discover me so by faint indirections,
And I when I meet you mean to discover you by the like in you.

[1860]

A radical in his time, he was the first American poet to achieve an international reputation.