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O to make the most jubilant song!
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Full of music—full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
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Full of common employments—full of grain and trees.
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O for the voices of animals—O for the swiftness and balance of fishes!
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O for the dropping of raindrops in a song!
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O for the sunshine and motion of waves in a song!
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O the joy of my spirit—it is uncaged—it darts like lightning!
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It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time,
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I will have thousands of globes and all time.
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O the engineer's joys! to go with a locomotive!
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To hear the hiss of steam, the merry shriek, the steam-whistle, the
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To push with resistless way and speed off in the distance.
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O the gleesome saunter over fields and hillsides!
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The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds, the moist fresh
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stillness of the woods,
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The exquisite smell of the earth at daybreak, and all through the forenoon.
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O the horseman's and horsewoman's joys!
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The saddle, the gallop, the pressure upon the seat, the cool
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gurgling by the ears and hair.
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I hear the alarm at dead of night,
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I hear bells, shouts! I pass the crowd, I run!
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The sight of the flames maddens me with pleasure.
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O the joy of the strong-brawn'd fighter, towering in the arena in
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perfect condition, conscious of power, thirsting to meet his opponent.
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O the joy of that vast elemental sympathy which only the human soul is
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capable of generating and emitting in steady and limitless floods.
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The watching, the endurance, the precious love, the anguish, the
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patiently yielded life.
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O the of increase, growth, recuperation,
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The joy of soothing and pacifying, the joy of concord and harmony.
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O to go back to the place where I was born,
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To hear the birds sing once more,
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To ramble about the house and barn and over the fields once more,
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And through the orchard and along the old lanes once more.
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O to have been brought up on bays, lagoons, creeks, or along the coast,
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To continue and be employ'd there all my life,
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The briny and damp smell, the shore, the salt weeds exposed at low water,
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The work of fishermen, the work of the eel-fisher and clam-fisher;
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I come with my clam-rake and spade, I come with my eel-spear,
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Is the tide out? I Join the group of clam-diggers on the flats,
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I laugh and work with them, I joke at my work like a mettlesome young man;
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In winter I take my eel-basket and eel-spear and travel out on foot
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on the ice—I have a small axe to cut holes in the ice,
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Behold me well-clothed going gayly or returning in the afternoon,
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my brood of tough boys accompanying me,
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My brood of grown and part-grown boys, who love to be with no
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one else so well as they love to be with me,
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By day to work with me, and by night to sleep with me.
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Another time in warm weather out in a boat, to lift the lobster-pots
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where they are sunk with heavy stones, (I know the buoys,)
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O the sweetness of the Fifth-month morning upon the water as I row
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just before sunrise toward the buoys,
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I pull the wicker pots up slantingly, the dark green lobsters are
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desperate with their claws as I take them out, I insert
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wooden pegs in the 'oints of their pincers,
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I go to all the places one after another, and then row back to the shore,
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There in a huge kettle of boiling water the lobsters shall be boil'd
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till their color becomes scarlet.
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Another time mackerel-taking,
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Voracious, mad for the hook, near the surface, they seem to fill the
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Another time fishing for rock-fish in Chesapeake bay, I one of the
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Another time trailing for blue-fish off Paumanok, I stand with braced body,
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My left foot is on the gunwale, my right arm throws far out the
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coils of slender rope,
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In sight around me the quick veering and darting of fifty skiffs, my
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O boating on the rivers,
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The voyage down the St. Lawrence, the superb scenery, the steamers,
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The ships sailing, the Thousand Islands, the occasional timber-raft
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and the raftsmen with long-reaching sweep-oars,
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The little huts on the rafts, and the stream of smoke when they cook
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(O something pernicious and dread!
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Something far away from a puny and pious life!
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Something unproved! something in a trance!
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Something escaped from the anchorage and driving free.)
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O to work in mines, or forging iron,
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Foundry casting, the foundry itself, the rude high roof, the ample
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The furnace, the hot liquid pour'd out and running.
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O to resume the joys of the soldier!
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To feel the presence of a brave commanding officer—to feel his sympathy!
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To behold his calmness—to be warm'd in the rays of his smile!
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To go to battle—to hear the bugles play and the drums beat!
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To hear the crash of artillery—to see the glittering of the bayonets
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and musket-barrels in the sun!
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To see men fall and die and not complain!
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To taste the savage taste of blood—to be so devilish!
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To gloat so over the wounds and deaths of the enemy.
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O the whaleman's joys! O I cruise my old cruise again!
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I feel the ship's motion under me, I feel the Atlantic breezes fanning me,
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I hear the cry again sent down from the mast-head, There—she blows!
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Again I spring up the rigging to look with the rest—we descend,
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I leap in the lower'd boat, we row toward our prey where he lies,
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We approach stealthy and silent, I see the mountainous mass,
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I see the harpooneer standing up, I see the weapon dart from his
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O swift again far out in the ocean the wounded whale, settling,
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running to windward, tows me,
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Again I see him rise to breathe, we row close again,
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I see a lance driven through his side, press'd deep, turn'd in the wound,
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Again we back off, I see him settle again, the life is leaving him fast,
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As he rises he spouts blood, I see him swim in circles narrower and
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narrower, swiftly cutting the water—I see him die,
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He gives one convulsive leap in the centre of the circle, and then
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falls flat and still in the bloody foam.
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O the old manhood of me, my noblest joy of all!
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My children and grand-children, my white hair and beard,
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My largeness, calmness, majesty, out of the long stretch of my life.
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O ripen'd joy of womanhood! O happiness at last!
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I am more than eighty years of age, I am the most venerable mother,
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How clear is my mind—how all people draw nigh to me!
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What attractions are these beyond any before? what bloom more
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than the bloom of youth?
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What beauty is this that descends upon me and rises out of me?
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To inflate the chest, to roll the thunder of the voice out from the
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To make the people rage, weep, hate, desire, with yourself,
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To lead America—to quell America with a great tongue.
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O the joy of my soul leaning pois'd on itself, receiving identity through
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materials and loving them, observing characters and absorbing them,
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My soul vibrated back to me from them, from sight, hearing, touch,
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reason, articulation, comparison, memory, and the like,
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The real life of my senses and flesh transcending my senses and flesh,
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My body done with materials, my sight done with my material eyes,
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Proved to me this day beyond cavil that it is not my material eyes
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Nor my material body which finally loves, walks, laughs, shouts,
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embraces, procreates.
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Ohioan's, Illinoisian's, Wisconsinese', Kanadian's, Iowan's,
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Kansian's, Missourian's, Oregonese' joys!
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To rise at peep of day and pass forth nimbly to work,
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To plough land in the fall for winter-sown crops,
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To plough land in the spring for maize,
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To train orchards, to graft the trees, to gather apples in the fall.
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O to bathe in the swimming-bath, or in a good place along shore,
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To splash the water! to walk ankle-deep, or race naked along the shore.
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The plenteousness of all, that there are no bounds,
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To emerge and be of the sky, of the sun and moon and flying
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clouds, as one with them.
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O the joy a manly self-hood!
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To be servile to none, to defer to none, not to any tyrant known or unknown,
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To walk with erect carriage, a step springy and elastic,
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To look with calm gaze or with a flashing eye,
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To speak with a full and sonorous voice out of a broad chest,
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To confront with your personality all the other personalities of the earth.
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Knowist thou the excellent joys of youth?
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Joys of the dear companions and of the merry word and laughing face?
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Joy of the glad light-beaming day, joy of the wide-breath'd games?
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Joy of sweet music, joy of the lighted ball-room and the dancers?
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Joy of the plenteous dinner, strong carouse and drinking?
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Yet O my soul supreme!
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Knowist thou the joys of pensive thought?
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Joys of the free and lonesome heart, the tender, gloomy heart?
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Joys of the solitary walk, the spirit bow'd yet proud, the suffering
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The agonistic throes, the ecstasies, joys of the solemn musings day
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Joys of the thought of Death, the great spheres Time and Space?
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Prophetic joys of better, loftier love's ideals, the divine wife,
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the sweet, eternal, perfect comrade?
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Joys all thine own undying one, joys worthy thee O soul.
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O while I live to be the ruler of life, not a slave,
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To meet life as a powerful conqueror,
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No fumes, no ennui, no more complaints or scornful criticisms,
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To these proud laws of the air, the water and the ground, proving
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my interior soul impregnable,
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And nothing exterior shall ever take command of me.
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For not life's joys alone I sing, repeating—the joy of death!
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The beautiful touch of Death, soothing and benumbing a few moments,
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Myself discharging my excrementitious body to be burn'd, or render'd
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to powder, or buried,
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My real body doubtless left to me for other spheres,
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My voided body nothing more to me, returning to the purifications,
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further offices, eternal uses of the earth.
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O to attract by more than attraction!
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How it is I know not—yet behold! the something which obeys none
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It is offensive, never defensive—yet how magnetic it draws.
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O to struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted!
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To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand!
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To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, face to face!
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To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with
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O to sail to sea in a ship!
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To leave this steady unendurable land,
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To leave the tiresome sameness of the streets, the sidewalks and the
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To leave you O you solid motionless land, and entering a ship,
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To sail and sail and sail!
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O to have life henceforth a poem of new joys!
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To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on!
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To be a sailor of the world bound for all ports,
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A ship itself, (see indeed these sails I spread to the sun and air,)
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A swift and swelling ship full of rich words, full of joys.
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