Emotions and Feelings

We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!

The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the walk in the street and the passage over the river.

Agonies are one of my changes of garments.

I am the man, I suffer’d, I was there.

Logic and sermons never convince, The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

Steep’d amid honey’d morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death.

I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious.

My foothold is tenon’d and mortis’d in granite, I laugh at what you call dissolution, And I know the amplitude of time.

Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.

But me they’ll lash in hammock, drop me deep. Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I’ll dream fast asleep. I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there? Just ease these darbies [manacles] at the wrist, And roll me over fair! I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist.

Ah, why should tears the pale cheek fret For aught that waneth here below. Let go, let go!

If Luther’s day expand to Darwin’s year, Shall that exclude the hope—foreclose the fear?

Foemen at morn, but friends at eve— Fame or country least their care: (What like a bullet can undeceive!)

When I was a beggarly boy, And lived in a cellar damp, I had not a friend nor a toy, But I had Aladdin’s lamp.

And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days.

The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude.

O may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence.

And almost everyone when age, Disease, or sorrows strike him, Inclines to think there is a God, Or something very like Him.

A solitary sail that rises White in the blue mist on the foam— What is it in far lands it prizes? What does it leave behind at home?

It’s a fact the whole world knows, That Pobbles are happier without their toes.

The Pobble who has no toes Had once as many as we; When they said, “Some day you may lose them all”— He replied, “Fish fiddle-de-dee!”

“I would be your wife most gladly!” (Here she twirled her fingers madly),