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!

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