Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass

I see the menials of the earth, laboring,
I see the prisoners in the prisons,
I see the defective human bodies of the earth,
I see the blind, the deaf and dumb, idiots, hunchbacks, lunatics,
I see the pirates, thieves, betrayers, murderers, slave-makers of the earth,
I see the helpless infants, and the helpless old men and women.

I see male and female everywhere,
I see the serene brotherhood of philosophs,
I see the constructiveness of my race,
I see the results of the perseverance and industry of my race,
I see ranks, colors, barbarisms, civilizations—I go among them, I mix indiscriminately,
And I salute all the inhabitants of the earth.

You, inevitable where you are!
You daughter or son of England!
You free man of Australia! you of Tasmania! you of Papua! you free woman of the same!
You of the mighty Slavic tribes and empires! you Russ in Russia!
You dim-descended, black, divine-souled African, large, fine-headed, nobly-formed, superbly destined, on equal terms with me!
You Norwegian! Swede! Dane! Icelander! you Prussian!
You Spaniard of Spain! you Portuguese!
You Frenchwoman and Frenchman of France!
You Belge! you liberty-lover of the Netherlands!
You sturdy Austrian! you Lombard! Hun! Bohemian! farmer of Styria!
You neighbor of the Danube!
You working-man of the Rhine, the Elbe, or the Weser! you working-woman too!
You Sardinian! you Bavarian! you Swabian! Saxon! Wallachian! Bulgarian!
You citizen of Prague! you Roman! Napolitan! Greek!
You lithe matador in the arena at Seville!
You mountaineer living lawlessly on the Taurus or Caucasus!
You Bokh horse-herd watching your mares and stallions feeding!
You beautiful-bodied Persian, at full speed in the saddle, shooting arrows to the mark!
You Chinaman and Chinawoman of China! you Tartar of Tartary!
You women of the earth, subordinated at your tasks!
You Jew journeying in your old age through every risk to stand once on Syrian ground!
You other Jews waiting in all lands for your Messiah!
You thoughtful Armenian pondering by some stream of the Euphrates! you peering amid the ruins of Nineveh! you ascending Mount Ararat!
You foot-worn pilgrim welcoming the far-away sparkle of the minarets of Mecca!
You sheiks along the stretch from Suez to Babelmandel, ruling your families and tribes!
You olive-grower tending your fruit on fields off Nazareth, Damascus, or Lake Tiberias!
You Thibet trader on the wide inland, or bargaining in the shops of Lassa!
You Japanese man or woman! you liver in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra, Borneo!
All you continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, indifferent of place!
All you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea!
And you of centuries hence, when you listen to me!
And you everywhere whom I specify not, but include just the same!

I salute you for myself and for America.
Each of us inevitable,
Each of us limitless—each of us with his or her right upon the earth,
Each of us allowed the eternal purport of the earth,
Each of us here as divinely as any is here.

You Hottentot with clicking palate!
You woolly-haired hordes! you white or black owners of slaves!
You owned persons dropping sweat-drops or blood-drops!
You felons, deformed persons, idiots!
You human forms with the fathomless ever-impressive countenances of brutes!
You poor koboo whom the meanest of the rest look down upon, for all your glimmering language and spirituality!
You low expiring aborigines of the hills of Utah, Oregon, California!
You dwarfed Kamskatkan, Greenlander, Lapp!
You Austral negro, naked, red, sooty, with protrusive lip, grovelling, seeking your food!
You Caffre, Berber, Soudanese!
You haggard, uncouth, untutored Bedowee!
You plague-swarms in Madras, Nankin, Kaubul, Cairo!
You bather bathing in the Ganges!
You benighted roamer of Amazonia! you Patagonian! you Fegee-man!
You peon of Mexico! you Russian serf! you quadroon of Carolina, Texas, Tennessee!
I do not refuse you my hand, or prefer others before you,
I do not say one word against you.

My spirit has passed in compassion and determination around the whole earth,
I have looked for brothers, sisters, lovers, and found them ready for me in all lands.

I think I have risen with you, you vapors, and moved away to distant continents, and fallen down there, for reasons,
I think I have blown with you, you winds,
I think, you waters, I have fingered every shore with you,
I think I have run through what any river or strait of the globe has run through,
I think I have taken my stand on the bases of peninsulas, and on imbedded rocks.

What cities the light or warmth penetrates, I penetrate those cities myself,
All islands to which birds wing their way, I wing my way myself,
I find my home wherever there are any homes of men.

Come closer to me,
Push close, my lovers, and take the best I possess,
Yield closer and closer, and give me the best you possess.

This is unfinished business with me—How is it with you?
I was chilled with the cold types, cylinder, wet paper between us.

I pass so poorly with paper and types, I must pass with the contact of bodies and souls.

I do not thank you for liking me as I am, and liking the touch of me—I know that it is good for you to do so.

Were all educations practical and ornamental well displayed out of me, what would it amount to?
Were I as the head teacher, charitable proprietor, wise statesman, what would it amount to?
Were I to you as the boss employing and paying you, would that satisfy you?

The learned, virtuous, benevolent, and the usual terms,
A man like me, and never the usual terms.

Neither a servant nor a master am I,
I take no sooner a large price than a small price—I will have my own, whoever enjoys me,
I will be even with you, and you shall be even with me.

If you are a workman or workwoman, I stand as nigh as the nighest that works in the same shop,
If you bestow gifts on your brother or dearest friend, I demand as good as your brother or dearest friend,
If your lover, husband, wife, is welcome by day or night, I must be personally as welcome,
If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake,
If you remember your foolish and outlawed deeds, do you think I cannot remember my own foolish and outlawed deeds? plenty of them?
If you carouse at the table, I carouse at the opposite side of the table,
If you meet some stranger in the street, and love him or her, do I not often meet strangers in the street and love them?
If you see a good deal remarkable in me, I see just as much, perhaps more, in you.

Why what have you thought of yourself?
Is it you, then, that thought yourself less?
Is it you that thought the President greater than you? or the rich better off than you? or the educated wiser than you?

Because you are greasy or pimpled, or that you was once drunk, or a thief, or diseased, or rheumatic, or a prostitute, or are so now, or from frivolity or impotence, or that you are no scholar, and never saw your name in print, do you give in that you are any less immortal?