I think I could turn and live with animals,

they are so placid and/self-contained

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.

Walt Whitman, from Song of Myself