A Rolling Stone

One Year By Bicycle

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!

--- Robert Service

A Rolling Stone is found in the book, Rhymes of a Rolling Stone (and not copyright Mike Vermeulen).