The future is no more uncertain than the present. - Walt Whitman

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean

Loafe with me on the grass.... loose the stop from
your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want.... not custom
or lecture,
not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.
I mind how we lay in June, such a transparent summer
morning;
You settled your head athwart my hips and gently
turned over
upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and
plunged your
tongue to my barestript heart,
And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till
you held my
feet.

the swarms of cringers, suckers, doughfaces, lice of politics, planners of sly involutions for their own preferment to city offices or state legislatures or the judiciary or congress or the presidency, obtain a response of love and natural deference from the people whether they get the offices or no . . . . when it is better to be a bound booby and rogue in office at a high salary than the poorest free mechanic or farmer with his hat unmoved from his head and firm eyes and a candid and generous heart . . . . and when servility by town or state or the federal government or any oppression on a large scale or small scale can be tried on without its own punishment following duly after in exact proportion against the smallest chance of escape . . . . or rather when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth — then only shall the instinct of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth.