Classic Poem

I WOULD love to shake from my feet the dust
Of hated civilized life
And go to the roaring torrid zone —
The land of eternal strife,
Of blazing colors and blinding rains,
Where one must fight to live,
Where Joy walks hand in hand with Death,
And only the strong survive.
There would I live as the cave man lived,
And play and fight and strive
And leap and run through the tangled trees
By Strength, only, kept alive;
And all through the blazing tropic day
To live wild, exultingly free,
And sleep at night in the moon's white beams,
In the top of a giant tree.