The law of the past can't be eluded, The law of the present and future cannot be eluded, The law of the living cannot be eluded, - Walt Whitman

O, to be a ruler of life — not a slave, To meet life as a powerful conqueror, No fumes — no ennui — no more complaints or scornful criticisms. O me repellent and ugly, O to these proud laws of the air, the water and the ground, proving my interior Soul impregnable, And nothing exterior shall ever take command of me.

I act as the tongue of you,
... tied in your mouth . . . . in mine it begins to be loosened.

"And now it [grass] seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves,

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
It may be you from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their
mother's laps,
And here you are the mothers' laps."

- Song of Myself: 6