Whitman

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.

-section from "Song of Myself" by poet Walt Whitman