Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature,
Master of all, or mistress of all—aplomb in the midst of irrational things,
Imbued as they—passive, receptive, silent as they,
Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less important than I thought;

Me private, or public, or menial, or solitary—all these subordinate, (I am eternally equal with the best—I am not subordinate;)
Me toward the Mexican Sea, or in the Mannahatta, or the Tennessee, or far north, or inland,
A river-man, or a man of the woods, or of any farm-life of These States, or of the coast, or the lakes, or Kanada,

Me, wherever my life is lived, O to be self-balanced for contingencies!

O to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.

~ Walt Whitman

I am so tired of waiting,
Aren’t you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
And cut the world in two –
And see what worms are eating
At the rind.

~ Langston Hughes