Front the mountains, cross the passes,
Pioneer the sheer crevasses,

Where the glaciers breed,

Where the imminent avalanches,

Tremble with their air-held motions,

Where below the balsam branches
Start the rills in the erosions,
Follow where they lead;

Where the sunlight ebbs in oceans,
Cast away your load!

Life is not the goal,

It is the road.

A Selection from SONG OF

THE OPEN ROAD

BY WALT WHITMAN

Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune-I myself am good fortune;

Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,

Strong and content, I travel the open road.

I think heroic deeds were all conceiv'd in the open air,

and all great poems also;

I think I could stop here myself, and do miracles; I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever beholds me shall like me;

I think whoever I see must be happy. .

I am larger, better than I thought;

...

I did not know I held so much goodness.

All seems beautiful to me;

I can repeat over to men and women, You have done such good to me, I would do the same to you.

I will recruit for myself and you as I go;

I will scatter myself among men and women as I go;
I will toss the new gladness and roughness among them;
Whoever denies me, it shall not trouble me;

Whoever accepts me, he or she shall be blessed, and shall bless me.

Allons! whoever you are, come travel with me! Traveling with me, you find what never tires. . . .

Allons! with power, liberty, the earth, the elements! Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity; Allons! from all formules! . . .

Allons! yet take warning!

He traveling with me needs the best blood, thews, endurance;

None may come to the trial, till he or she bring courage and health, .

Allons! after the GREAT COMPANIONS! and to belong

to them! They too are on the road! they are the swift and majestic men! they are the greatest women.

Allons! to that which is endless, as it was beginningless..

To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it,

To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it and pass it,

To look up and down no road but it stretches and waits for you-however long but it stretches and waits. for you...

To see no possession but you may possess it-enjoying all without labor or purchase-abstracting the feast, yet not abstracting one particle of it. . .

Allons! whoever you are! come forth!

...

You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house, though you built it, or though it has been

built for you.

Allons! out of the dark confinement! . . .

Allons! through struggles and wars!

The goal that was named can not be countermanded. . . .

Allons! the road is before us!

It is safe-I have tried it-my own feet have tried it well.

Allons! be not detain'd!

Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen'd!

Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn'd! . .

Mon enfant! I give you my hand!

I give you my love, more precious than money,
I give you myself, before preaching or law;

Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?

Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

ALE

BY WILLIAM H. DAVIES

Now do I hear thee weep and groan,
Who hast a comrade sunk at sea?
Then quaff thee of my good old ale,
And it will raise him up for thee;
Thou'lt think as little of him then
As when he moved with living men.

If thou hast hopes to move the world,
And every effort it doth fail,

Then to thy side call Jack and Jim,

And bid them drink with thee good ale;
So may the world, that would not hear,
Perish in hell with all your care.

One quart of good old ale, and I

Feel then what life immortal is:
The brain is empty of all thought,

The heart is brimming o'er with bliss;
Time's first child, Life, doth live; but Death,
The second, hath not yet his breath.

LIFE-DRUNK

BY ARTHUR STRINGER

On opal Aprilian mornings like this
I seem dizzy and drunk with life.
I waken and wander and laugh in the sun;
With some mystical knowledge enormous
I lift up my face to the light..

Drunk with a gladness stupendous I seem;
With some wine of Immensity god-like I reel;
And my arm could fling Time from his Throne;

I could pelt the awed taciturn arch

Of Morning with music and mirth;

And I feel, should I find but a voice for my thought, That the infinite orbits of all God's

stars

loneliest

That are weaving vast traceries out on the fringes of

Night

Could never stand more than a hem on the robe of

my Song!