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!