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 my faint indirections,
And I when I meet you mean to discover you by the like in you.Among the Multitude
About the poet
Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, on Long Island, New York. He was the second son of Walter Whitman, a house-builder, and Louisa Van Velsor. In the 1820s and 1830s, the family, which consisted of nine children, lived in Long Island and Bro…
View profile & all 48 Poems / StoriesMore from Walt Whitman
To a Stranger
Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,)
I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing
I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,
Continuities
Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,No birth, identity, form no object of the world.
We Two, How Long We Were Fool’d
We two, how long we were fool d,Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes,
Not the Pilot
Not the pilot has charged himself to bring his ship into port, though beaten back and many times baffled;Not the pathfinder penetrating inland weary and long,
