Happiness and Joy

oh god it’s wonderful to get out of bed and drink too much coffee and smoke too many cigarettes and love you so much

Into the company of love it all returns.

And honored among foxes and pheasants by the gay house Under the new-made clouds and happy as the heart was long, I ran my heedless ways.

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green.

Until everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow! And I let the fish go.

To joyously savor one single instant of initial life I seek an innocent country 1

Sudden in a shaft of sunlight Even while the dust moves There rises the hidden laughter Of children in the foliage Quick now, here, now, always— Ridiculous the waste sad time Stretching before and after.

Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill, Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.

Who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household?

One’s grand flights, one’s Sunday baths, One’s tootings at the weddings of the soul Occur as they occur.

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair.

I am Rose my eyes are blue I am Rose and who are you I am Rose and when I sing I am Rose like anything.

Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes, Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.

When such as I cast out remorse So great a sweetness flows into the breast We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blest.

When I play on my fiddle in Dooney, Folk dance like a wave of the sea.

Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.

I’ve taken my fun where I’ve found it.

It is sweet to dance to violins When Love and Life are fair: To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes Is delicate and rare: But it is not sweet with nimble feet To dance upon the air!

Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone.

The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.

Three little maids from school are we, Pert as a schoolgirl well can be, Filled to the brim with girlish glee.

Is come, my love is come to me.

My heart is like a singing bird.

A little Madness in the Spring Is wholesome even for the King.