Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it. - Walt Whitman

I am the man, I suffered, I was there.

"We descend upon you and all things — we arrest you all;
We realize the soul only by you, you faithful solids and fluids;
Through you color, form, location, sublimity, ideality;
Through you every proof, comparison, and all the suggestions and determinations of ourselves.

You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers! you novices!
We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward;
Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us;
We use you, and do not cast you aside — we plant you permanently within us;
"We fathom you not — we love you — there is perfection in you also;
You furnish your parts toward eternity;
Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.

The boy I love, the same becomes a man not through derived power but in his own right,
Wicked, rather than virtuous out of conformity or fear,
Fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his steak,
Unrequited love or a slight cutting him worse than a wound cuts,
First rate to ride, to fight, to hit the bull's eye, to sail a skiff, to sing a song or play on the banjo,
Preferring scars and faces pitted with smallpox over all latherers and those that keep out the sun.