Rhymes of a Rolling Stone

A Rolling Stone

          There's sunshine in the heart of me,
          My blood sings in the breeze;
          The mountains are a part of me,
          I'm fellow to the trees.
          My golden youth I'm squandering,
          Sun-libertine am I;
          A-wandering, a-wandering,
          Until the day I die.

     I was once, I declare, a Stone-Age man,
      And I roomed in the cool of a cave;
     I have known, I will swear, in a new life-span,
      The fret and the sweat of a slave:
     For far over all that folks hold worth,
      There lives and there leaps in me
     A love of the lowly things of earth,
      And a passion to be free.

     To pitch my tent with no prosy plan,
      To range and to change at will;
     To mock at the mastership of man,
      To seek Adventure's thrill.
     Carefree to be, as a bird that sings;
      To go my own sweet way;
     To reck not at all what may befall,
      But to live and to love each day.

     To make my body a temple pure
      Wherein I dwell serene;
     To care for the things that shall endure,
      The simple, sweet and clean.
     To oust out envy and hate and rage,
      To breathe with no alarm;
     For Nature shall be my anchorage,
      And none shall do me harm.

     To shun all lures that debauch the soul,
      The orgied rites of the rich;
     To eat my crust as a rover must
      With the rough-neck down in the ditch.
     To trudge by his side whate'er betide;
      To share his fire at night;
     To call him friend to the long trail-end,
      And to read his heart aright.

     To scorn all strife, and to view all life
      With the curious eyes of a child;
     From the plangent sea to the prairie,
      From the slum to the heart of the Wild.
     From the red-rimmed star to the speck of sand,
      From the vast to the greatly small;
     For I know that the whole for good is planned,
      And I want to see it all.

     To see it all, the wide world-way,
      From the fig-leaf belt to the Pole;
     With never a one to say me nay,
      And none to cramp my soul.
     In belly-pinch I will pay the price,
      But God! let me be free;
     For once I know in the long ago,
      They made a slave of me.

     In a flannel shirt from earth's clean dirt,
      Here, pal, is my calloused hand!
     Oh, I love each day as a rover may,
      Nor seek to understand.
     To ENJOY is good enough for me;
      The gipsy of God am I;
     Then here's a hail to each flaring dawn!
     And here's a cheer to the night that's gone!
     And may I go a-roaming on
      Until the day I die!

          Then every star shall sing to me
          Its song of liberty;
          And every morn shall bring to me
          Its mandate to be free.
          In every throbbing vein of me
          I'll feel the vast Earth-call;
          O body, heart and brain of me
          Praise Him who made it all!