Blind loving wrestling touch, sheath'd hooded sharp-tooth'd touch! Did it make you ache so, leaving me? - Walt Whitman

My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the whole earth.
I have look'd for equals and lovers an found them ready for me in all lands,
I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them

"A Glimpse"

A glimpse through an interstice caught,

Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremark’d seated in a corner,

Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,

A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest,

There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word.

America must welcome all — -Chinese, Irish, German, pauper or not, criminal or not — -all, all, without exceptions: become an asylum for all who choose to come. We may have drifted away from this principle temporarily but time will bring us back. … America is not for special types, for the caste, but for the great mass of people — -the vast, surging, hopeful, army of workers. Dare we deny them a home — -close the doors in their face — — take possession of all and fence it in and then sit down satisfied with our system — -convinced that we have solved our problem? I for my part refuse to connect America with such a failure — -such a tragedy, for tragedy it would be.