A man is a summons and challenge,
(It is vain to skulk—­do you hear that mocking and laughter? do you
    hear the ironical echoes?)

Books, friendships, philosophers, priests, action, pleasure, pride,
    beat up and down seeking to give satisfaction,
He indicates the satisfaction, and indicates them that beat up and
    down also.

Whichever the sex, whatever the season or place, he may go freshly
    and gently and safely by day or by night,
He has the pass-key of hearts, to him the response of the prying of
    hands on the knobs.

His welcome is universal, the flow of beauty is not more welcome or
    universal than he is,
The person he favors by day or sleeps with at night is blessed.

Every existence has its idiom, every thing has an idiom and tongue,
He resolves all tongues into his own and bestows it upon men, and
    any man translates, and any man translates himself also,
One part does not counteract another part, he is the joiner, he sees
    how they join.

He says indifferently and alike How are you friend? to the President
    at his levee,
And he says Good-day my brother, to Cudge that hoes in the sugar-field,
And both understand him and know that his speech is right.

He walks with perfect ease in the capitol,
He walks among the Congress, and one Representative says to another,
    Here is our equal appearing and new.

Then the mechanics take him for a mechanic,
And the soldiers suppose him to be a soldier, and the sailors that
    he has follow’d the sea,
And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an artist,
And the laborers perceive he could labor with them and love them,
No matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it or has
    follow’d it,
No matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and
    sisters there.

The English believe he comes of their English stock,
A Jew to the Jew he seems, a Russ to the Russ, usual and near,
    removed from none.

Whoever he looks at in the traveler’s coffee-house claims him,
The Italian or Frenchman is sure, the German is sure, the Spaniard
    is sure, and the island Cuban is sure,
The engineer, the deck-hand on the great lakes, or on the Mississippi
    or St. Lawrence or Sacramento, or Hudson or Paumanok sound, claims him.

The gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood,
The insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see
    themselves in the ways of him, he strangely transmutes them,
They are not vile any more, they hardly know themselves they are so grown.