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.
There are two errors in the poem: 1) on line five, the word “but” should not be capitalized and 2) on line seven, the word “my” should be deleted, as it was not in Whitman’s original poem.