One day in June, my higher self, emergent
From the soundless deeps,
Rose to new life ineffable,
Beyond all signs, beyond descriptions.
Speech into knowledge passed;
Opinions lost their meaning;
Soul-dimness and depression changed
To ecstasy of flight and soaring exaltation.
The creeds, conventions, categories, castes,
Were swept by final, bold assurance
Out of experience as meaningless and nought,
As dead leaves of a past vitality.

Straightway, I knew there is no death.
No evil thing can challenge Love
And shake its damning fist in face of Heaven,
Threatening the soul forever.
The cure of wrong is light and love;
Of baser wrong, a light more penetrant,
A love more buoyant and more brotherly.
There is no gulf 'twixt great and small;
I find the wholesome duties and sweet cares
Transcend all pleasures, wealth, art, intellect.
Even democracy dwindles to measurable proportions
In comparison with common things
Agleam with good.
The trees and grass are part of a wonderful dream.
The streams and stars of light
Are thrilled with mystery of life,
Dazzling my being with mute joy.
The animals, placid and patient,
Are of one soul with me. I swear
That every one of them to me is dear.
They do not torture themselves with self-accusing,
Or lie awake at night bemoaning their sins.
They are never convicted of hypocrisy,
Or cant of a silk-ribbon sainthood.
They are not bound hand and soul
By cable conventions. Not one of them says:
“I have suffered.” They are not melancholy.
Not one of them is a gossip or a busybody.
They are not rich, nor respectable, nor unhappy,
Alienated from themselves by owning things.

This is my word to the people:
Resist much; obey little. Once fully enslaved,
No nation ever resumes its liberty.
Why should you snub opportunity
Or fear to be interesting to yourselves?
Why should you write only quotations
On the white pages of time?
Readjust the sentence of life to your own satisfaction;
Accept the unusual, the inconvenient, the heroic;
Fuse present and past laws
To make yourselves a new law every morning.
Consider the honest farms and homesteads,
The wealth-producing factories,
The trade by land and sea.
Valid are the deep integrities,
The inevitable virtues, excellent graces.
Necessary too, stern Justice that drives
Iniquity and dishonour out of the land.
Beautiful, self-denying motherhood and fatherhood,
And not less beautiful, brotherhood and comradeship.

Ah, you with threadbare coat and haggard eyes,
Little you dream how I feel towards you;
And you with timid glance and hesitant,
Walking anxiously, carefully through the throng,
Little you suspect how I love you.
I have waited all my life to find you.
After long years you have come
To live on the same planet with me,
On the same continent, in the same city.
I look deep into your eyes and am glad
That the gods did not plant us in separate worlds.

But oh, to walk with you
Where freedom is of space and air,
Defended only by light and love,
To stand with you in the universal day;
Dissolving conventions, and bonds, mine and yours,
Escaping utterly from alien anchors and holds;
To drive free and far, to waive
Ordinations, superiorities, professions,
Ideas like skeletons, slow to crumble,
Mythologies, useful as playthings;
To dare made-to-order destructions!
How I would make the eyes laugh and dance
That are haggard and anxious,
The feet bold and nimble and daring
That are timid and fearful;
Till all comrades of earth, free and buoyant,
Love, working; work, loving;
Till life as deep as the sea,
Till love and sex as pure as the dew,
Breed sons and daughters strong to run
As the wild things that breathe the air of the mountains!