Animals

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I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth. 


******* 
Excerpt from `Song of Myself´.
✍ Walt Whitman (West Hills, Hantington, Long Island [U.S.], May 31, 1819 ~ Camden, New Jersey [U.S.], March 26, 1892).
 
 ◙ Jacopo Comin ~ "Tintoretto".

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