Poem of Joys

1.O to make a most jubilant poem!O full of music! Full of manhood, womanhood,infancy!O full of common employments! Full of grain andtrees.

2.O for the voices of animals! O for the swiftness andbalance of fishes!O for the dropping of rain-drops in a poem!O for the sunshine and motion of waves in a poem.

3.O to be on the sea! the wind, the wide watersaround;O to sail in a ship under full sail at sea.

4.O the joy of my spirit! It is uncaged! It darts likelightning!It is not enough to have this globe, or a certain time—I will have thousands of globes, and all time.

5.O the engineer's joys!To go with a locomotive!

To hear the hiss of steam—the merry shriek—thesteam-whistle—the laughing locomotive!To push with resistless way, and speed off in thedistance.

6.O the horseman's and horsewoman's joys!The saddle—the gallop—the pressure upon the seat—the cool gurgling by the ears and hair.

7.O the fireman's joys!I hear the alarm at dead of night,I hear bells—shouts!—I pass the crowd—I run!The sight of the flames maddens me with pleasure.

8.O the joy of the strong-brawned fighter, toweringin the arena, in perfect condition, conscious ofpower, thirsting to meet his opponent.

9.O the joy of that vast elemental sympathy which onlythe human Soul is capable of generating andemitting in steady and limitless floods.

10.O the mother's joys!The watching—the endurance—the precious love—the anguish—the patiently yielded life.

11.O the joy of increase, growth, recuperation,The joy of soothing and pacifying—the joy ofconcord and harmony.

12.O to go back to the place where I was born!O to hear the birds sing once more!To ramble about the house and barn, and over thefields, once more,

And through the orchard and along the old lanesonce more.

13.O male and female!O the presence of women! (I swear, nothing is moreexquisite to me than the presence of women;)O for the girl, my mate! O for happiness with mymate!O the young man as I pass! O I am sick after thefriendship of him who, I fear, is indifferentto me.

14.O the streets of cities!The flitting faces—the expressions, eyes, feet, costumes!I cannot tell how welcome they areto me;O of men—of women toward me as I pass—Thememory of only one look—the boy lingeringand waiting.

15.O to have been brought up on bays, lagoons, creeks,or along the coast!O to continue and be employed there all my life!O the briny and damp smell—the shore—the saltweeds exposed at low water.The work of fishermen—the work of the eel-fisherand clam-fisher.

16.O it is I!I come with my clam-rake and spade! I come withmy eel-spear;Is the tide out? I join the group of clam-diggers onthe flats,

I laugh and work with them—I joke at my work,like a mettlesome young man.

17.In winter I take my eel-basket and eel-spear and travelout on foot on the ice—I have a small axe to cutholes in the ice;Behold me, well-clothed, going gayly, or returning inthe afternoon—my brood of tough boys accompanyingme.My brood of grown and part-grown boys, who loveto be with none else so well as they love to bewith me,By day to work with me, and by night to sleep withme.

18.Or, another time, in warm weather, out in a boat, tolift the lobster-pots, where they are sunk withheavy stones, (I know the buoys;)O the sweetness of the Fifth Month morning upon thewater, as I row, just before sunrise, toward thebuoys;I pull the wicker pots up slantingly—the dark greenlobsters are desperate with their claws, as I takethem out—I insert wooden pegs in the joints oftheir pincers,I go to all the places, one after another, and then rowback to the shore,There, in a huge kettle of boiling water, the lobstersshall be boiled till their color becomes scarlet.

19.Or, another time, mackerel-taking,Voracious, mad for the hook, near the surface, theyseem to fill the water for miles;

Or, another time, fishing for rock-fish in ChesapeakeBay—I one of the brown-faced crew;Or, another time, trailing for blue-fish off Paumanok,I stand with braced body.My left foot is on the gunwale—my right arm throwsthe coils of slender rope,In sight around me the quick veering and darting offifty skiffs, my companions.

20.O boating on the rivers!The voyage down the Niagara, (the St. Lawrence,)—the superb scenery—the steamers,The ships sailing—the Thousand Islands—the occasionaltimber-raft, and the raftsmen with long-reachingsweep-oars,The little huts on the rafts, and the stream of smokewhen they cook supper at evening.

21.O something pernicious and dread!Something far away from a puny and pious life!Something unproved! Something in a trance!Something escaped from the anchorage, and drivingfree.

22.O to work in mines, or forging iron!Foundry casting—the foundry itself—the rude highroof—the ample and shadowed space,The furnace—the hot liquid poured out and running.

23.O the joys of the soldier!To feel the presence of a brave general! to feel hissympathy!To behold his calmness! to be warmed in the rays ofhis smile!

To go to battle! to hear the bugles play, and the drumsbeat!To hear the artillery! to see the glittering of the bayonetsand musket-barrels in the sun!To see men fall and die and not complain!To taste the savage taste of blood! to be so devilish!To gloat so over the wounds and deaths of the enemy.

24.O the whaleman's joys! I cruise my old cruiseagain!I feel the ship's motion under me—I feel the Atlanticbreezes fanning me,I hear the cry again sent down from the mast-head,There she blows,Again I spring up the rigging, to look with the rest—We see—we descend, wild with excitement,I leap in the lowered boat—We row toward our prey,where he lies,We approach, stealthy and silent—I see the mountainousmass, lethargic, basking,I see the harpooner standing up—I see the weapondart from his vigorous arm;O swift, again, now, far out in the ocean, the woundedwhale, settling, running to windward, tows me,Again I see him rise to breathe—We row closeagain,I see a lance driven through his side, pressed deep,turned in the wound.Again we back off—I see him settle again—the lifeis leaving him fast.As he rises, he spouts blood—I see him swim in circlesnarrower and narrower, swiftly cutting thewater—I see him die,

He gives one convulsive leap in the centre of the circle,and then falls flat and still in the bloodyfoam.

25.O the old manhood of me, my joy!My children and grand-children—my white hair andbeard.My largeness, calmness, majesty, out of the longstretch of my life.

26.O the ripened joy of womanhood!O perfect happiness at last!I am more than eighty years of age—my hair, too, ispure white—I am the most venerable mother;How clear is my mind! how all people draw nigh tome!What attractions are these, beyond any before? whatbloom, more than the bloom of youth?What beauty is this that descends upon me, and risesout of me?

27.O the joy of my Soul leaning poised on itself—receivingidentity through materials, and loving them—observing characters, and absorbing them;O my Soul, vibrated back to me, from them—fromfacts, sight, hearing, touch, my phrenology,reason, articulation, comparison, memory, andthe like;O the real life of my senses and flesh, transcendingmy senses and flesh;O my body, done with materials—my sight, donewith my material eyes;O what is proved to me this day, beyond cavil, that itis not my material eyes which finally see,

Nor my material body which finally loves, walks,laughs, shouts, embraces, procreates.

28.O the farmer's joys!Ohioan's, Illinoisian's, Wisconsinese', Kanadian's, Iowan's,Kansian's, Missourian's, Oregonese' joys,To rise at peep of day, and pass forth nimbly to work,To plough land in the fall for winter-sown crops,To plough land in the spring for maize,To train orchards—to graft the trees—to gatherapples in the fall.

29.O the pleasure with trees!The orchard—the forest—the oak, cedar, pine,pekan-tree,The honey-locust, black-walnut, cottonwood, and magnolia.

30.O Death!O the beautiful touch of Death, soothing and benumbinga few moments, for reasons;O that of myself, discharging my excrementitiousbody, to be burned, or rendered to powder, orburied,My real body doubtless left to me for other spheres,My voided body, nothing more to me, returning to thepurifications, further offices, eternal uses of theearth.

31.O to bathe in the swimming-bath, or in a good placealong shore!To splash the water! to walk ankle-deep; to racenaked along the shore.

32.O to realize space!The plenteousness of all—that there are no bounds;To emerge, and be of the sky—of the sun and moon,and the flying clouds, as one with them.

33.O, while I live, to be the ruler of life—not a slave,To meet life as a powerful conqueror,No fumes—no ennui—no more complaints or scornfulcriticisms.

34.O me repellent and ugly!O to these proud laws of the air, the water, andthe ground, proving my interior Soul impregnable,And nothing exterior shall ever take command of me.

35.O to attract by more than attraction!How it is I know not—yet behold! the somethingwhich obeys none of the rest,It is offensive, never defensive—yet how magneticit draws.

36.O the joy of suffering!To struggle against great odds! to meet enemies undaunted!To be entirely alone with them! to find how much Ican stand!To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, death,face to face!To mount the scaffold! to advance to the muzzles ofguns with perfect nonchalance!To be indeed a God!

37.O the gleesome saunter over fields and hill-sides!The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds—themoist fresh stillness of the woods,The exquisite smell of the earth at day-break, and allthrough the forenoon.

38.O love-branches! love-root! love-apples!O chaste and electric torrents! O mad-sweet drops.

39.O the orator's joys!To inflate the chest—to roll the thunder of the voiceout from the ribs and throat,To make the people rage, weep, hate, desire, withyourself,To lead America—to quell America with a greattongue.

40.O the joy of a manly self-hood!Personality—to be servile to none—to defer to none—not to any tyrant, known or unknown,To walk with erect carriage, a step springy andelastic,To look with calm gaze, or with a flashing eye,To speak with a full and sonorous voice, out of abroad chest,To confront with your personality all the other personalitiesof the earth.

41.O to have my life henceforth my poem of joys!To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on,float on,An athlete—full of rich words—full of joys.