書摘 Tamedanduntamed

 I've been reading a bout about animals.  It's called Tamed and untamed - close encounter of animal kind.  

I ran into a Whitman poem in the book which matched the article quite nicely.  So I tried to find the whole thing.  After reading through part of it, I lost interest.  Although the two sentenced quoted by the author in the Tamed and untamed still makes me happy.  And most people quote specifically that part of the poem.  I think it has a better resonance with the readers, especially compared to animals to people.  

        "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.
So they show their relations to me and I accept them,
They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their
possession.
I wonder where they get those tokens,
Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them?"

--Walt Whitman, "Song of myself, part 32"

The tone of being tired of human and society in general is clear.  I find the lament of hearing people discussing their duty to God was quite funny.  

The two sentences used in the book was:

"They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins"