| |
| THIS is the song of youth, | |
| This is the cause of myself; | |
| I knew my father well and he was a fool, | |
| Therefore will I have my own foot in the path before I take a step; | |
| I will go only into new lands, | 5 |
| And I will walk on no plank-walks. | |
| The horses of my family are wind-broken, | |
| And the dogs are old, | |
| And the guns rusty; | |
| I will make me a new bow from an ash-tree, | 10 |
| And cut up the homestead into arrows. | |
| |
| Behold how people stand around! | |
| (There are always crowds of people standing around, | |
| Whose legs have no knees)— | |
| While the engineers put up steel work … | 15 |
| Is it something to catch the sunlight, | |
| Jewelry and gew-gaw? | |
| I have no time to wait for them to build bridges for me; | |
| Where awful the gap seems stretching there is no gap, | |
| Leaping I take it at once from a thought to a thought. | 20 |
| I can no more walk in the stride of other men | |
| Than be father of their children. | |
| |
| My treasure lured like a bright star, | |
| And I went to it young and desirous. | |
| Lo, as it stood there in its great chests, | 25 |
| The wise men came up with the keys, | |
| Crying, “Blasphemy, blasphemy!” | |
| For I had broken the locks…. | |
| And when the procession went waving to a funeral, | |
| They cried it again; | 30 |
| For I stayed in my home and spoke truth about the dead. | |
| |
| Much did I learn waiting in my youth; | |
| At the door of a great man I waited on one foot and then on the other. | |
| The files passed in and out before me to the antechamber, for at that door I was not favored: | |
| (O costly preferment!) | 35 |
| Yet I watched them coming and going, | |
| And I learned the great man by heart from the stories on their faces. | |
| When presently the retainers arrived, one above the other in a row, saying: | |
| “The great man is ready,” | |
| I had long been a greater than he. | 40 |
| |
| This is the reason for myself: | |
| When I used to go in the races, I had but one prayer, | |
| And I went first before the judges, saying; | |
| “Give everyone a distance, such as you consider best; | |
| I will run scratch.” | 45 |
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