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I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence, Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt, Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd […] It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall, The dark threw its patches down upon me also … […] The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like, Or as small as we like, or both great and small.
– Walt Whitman, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”