Neither a servant nor a master 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 stand at work in a shop I stand as nigh as
the nighest 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 outlaw’d deeds,
do you think I
cannot remember my own foolish
and outlaw’d deeds?
If you carouse at the table I carouse at the opposite
side of the table,
If you meet some stranger in the streets and love
him or her, why
I often meet strangers in
the street and love them.
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 were once drunk,
or a thief,
Or that you are diseas’d, or rheumatic, or a
prostitute,
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?)
2
Souls of men and women! it is not you I call unseen,
unheard,
untouchable and untouching,
It is not you I go argue pro and con about, and to
settle whether
you are alive or no,
I own publicly who you are, if nobody else owns.
Grown, half-grown and babe, of this country and every
country,
in-doors and out-doors, one
just as much as the other, I see,
And all else behind or through them.
The wife, and she is not one jot less than the husband,
The daughter, and she is just as good as the son,
The mother, and she is every bit as much as the father.
Offspring of ignorant and poor, boys apprenticed to
trades,
Young fellows working on farms and old fellows working
on farms,
Sailor-men, merchant-men, coasters, immigrants,
All these I see, but nigher and farther the same I
see,
None shall escape me and none shall wish to escape
me.
I bring what you much need yet always have,
Not money, amours, dress, eating, erudition, but as
good,
I send no agent or medium, offer no representative
of value, but
offer the value itself.
There is something that comes to one now and perpetually,
It is not what is printed, preach’d, discussed,
it eludes discussion
and print,
It is not to be put in a book, it is not in this book,
It is for you whoever you are, it is no farther from
you than your
hearing and sight are from
you,
It is hinted by nearest, commonest, readiest, it is
ever provoked by them.


