| |
I THE SONG OF YOUTH
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 |
| |
II VIRGINS I have had one fear in my life— | |
| When I was young I feared virgins; | |
| But I do not any more … | |
| By contact with them I learn that each is a center, | |
| And has a period of brightness, | 50 |
| And stands epitome in that brief space | |
| Of the Universe! | |
| Ah, the ephemeral eternal! | |
| In virgins’ eyes I would live reflected as in a globe, | |
| And know myself purer than crystal. | 55 |
| |
III NO PREY AM I No prey am I of poor thoughts. | |
| I leave all of my followers; I tire quickly of them; | |
| I send them away from me when they ask too much; for though I live alone | |
| Still will I live, night and day … | |
| |
| There is not anything in me save mutation and laughter; | 60 |
| My laughter is like a sword, | |
| Like the piston-rod that defies oceans and grades. | |
| When I labor it is a song of battle in the broad noon; | |
| For behold the muscles of a man— | |
| They are piston-rods; they are cranes, hydraulic presses, powder-magazines: | 65 |
| But though my body be as beautiful as a hill crowned with flowers | |
| I will despise it and make it obey me … | |
| |
| Is the old love dead? | |
| Then I shall await the new, | |
| To embrace it more sturdily and passionately than ever the old; | 70 |
| And break it under the white force of my laughter | |
| Until it lies passive in my arms. | |
| There is nothing in me but renewal; | |
| If my friend bow his head over me I soon surprise him with shouts of joy: | |
| For in an instant I am again what I was, | 75 |
| Only with a few moments more of the infusion of Earth; | |
| I tell him, the griever, to follow me and he is a griever no more; | |
| He raises his head and must follow. | |
| Yet it is my battle, not his battle, | |
| For in me I absorb others … | 80 |
| I hail parties and partisans from afar; | |
| Not men but parties are my comrades, | |
| Not persons but nations are my associates. | |
| I shake the hand of nations; | |
| For I am a nation and a party, and majorities do not elect me— | 85 |
| I elect myself. | |
| I swam in the sea, and lo! | |
| The continents assembled like islands off my coast. | |
| My talk is with Homer and Bonaparte, with David and Garibaldi, with China and Pharaoh and Texas; | |
| When I laugh it is with Lucifer and Rabelais. | 90 |
| A pathfinder is my mistress, one hard to keep and unbridled, | |
| I have no respect for tame women. | |
| My friends and I do not meet every day, | |
| For we are centuries apart, our salutations girdle the globe. | |
| I have eaten locusts with Jeremiah; | 95 |
| I invite all hatreds and the stings of little creatures, | |
| They enrich me, I glory in my parasites. | |
| |
| No man shall ever read me, | |
| For I bring about in a gesture what they cannot fathom in a life; | |
| Yet I tell Bob and Harry and Bill— | 100 |
| It costs me nothing to be kind; | |
| If I am a generous adversary, be not deceived, neither be devoted— | |
| It is because I despise you. | |
| Yet if any man claim to be my peer I shall meet him, | |
| For that man has an insolence that I like; | 105 |
| I am beholden to him. | |
| I know the lightning when I see it, | |
| And the toad when I see it … | |
| I warn all pretenders. | |
| Yet before I came it was known of me to the chosen, all that I should do. | 110 |
| Every tree knew it; | |
| Every lion and every leech knew it— | |
| And called out to meet the new enemy, | |
| The new friend … | |
| What power can deny me? | 115 |
| It was known that I should do not one thing but hundreds, | |
| For I despise my works and make them obey me. | |
| I have my time and I bide it … | |
| It was known that I should turn no whit from my end, until I had attained it. | |
| |
| Nothing has scathed me, | 120 |
| Nothing ever, nor ever will. | |
| I have touched pitch, I have revelled in it and rolled in it; | |
| Buried in mire and filth, I laughed long, | |
| And sprang up. | |
| I have loved lust and vain deviltries | 125 |
| And taken them into my heart— | |
| Their dirt and their lies—and my heart was aflame | |
| With a new fancy … | |
| Not me can pitch defile! | |
| For the Spring, my sister, rose under my feet | 130 |
| And I was again naked and white, | |
| Ready to dive into the deep pool, green and bottomless, | |
| The medium for heroes, since it is dangerous and beautiful— | |
| The pool of Tomorrow! | |
| It is because I breathe like fishes and live in the waters of Tomorrow that Death fears me … | 135 |
| |
| How often I have intercepted thee, O Death! | |
| O windy Liar! | |
| Thou canst do nothing against me; | |
| If I command thee to stand back thou art afraid and cowerest, | |
| For I have caught thee often and punished thee … | 140 |
| |
| I am the greatest laugher of all, | |
| Greater than the sun and the oak-tree, | |
| Than the frog and Apollo; | |
| I laugh all day long! | |
| I laugh at Death, I hail Death, I kiss her on the cheek as a lover his bride, | 145 |
| But the lover goes not to his bride unless he desire her; | |
| I go not to Death until I am ready. | |
| The strong lover goes not to his bride save when he would people his land with sons, | |
| Then I too, I go not to Death, save it be for the labor greater than all others. | |
| I shall break her with my laughter; | 150 |
| I shall complete her … | |
| Only then shall Death be when I die! | |
| |
