Remain untamed, let thy fountainhead flow true!
May thy youth burn bright across the zenith hours!
Come to tame, to lead, but never with head bowed!
Be boundless thy exuberance against all thy defeats!
Stay to your own pathways, mistrusting all temptation!
Let the warming sun encourage! Yeah, brighten thy soul!
Do not let the vague hours dissemble nor dissuade!
Forbidding their distraction on evening's coming twilight!
Embrace thee every wisdom as hoary age might impart!
Remain ye unbowed, thy laurels, keepsakes, and crowns!
I pray thee, ardent youth, never fail me in shadow's fall!
As my abiding testament to youth's burning flame!
Never, never, never! Let fair youth grow old!
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| poet Kahlil Gibran |
In my youth the heart of dawn was in my heart, and the songs of April were in my ears.
But my soul was sad unto death, and I knew not why. Even unto this day I know not why I was sad.
But now, though I am with eventide, my heart is still veiling dawn,
And though I am with autumn, my ears still echo the songs of spring.
But my sadness has turned into awe, and I stand in the presence of life and life’s daily miracles.
The difference between my youth which was my spring, and these forty years, and they are my autumn, is the very difference that exists between flower and fruit.
A flower is forever swayed with the wind and knows not why and wherefore.
But the fruit overladen with the honey of summer, knows that it is one of life’s home-comings, as a poet when his song is sung knows sweet content,
Though life has been bitter upon his lips.
In my youth I longed for the unknown, and for the unknown I am still longing.
But in the days of my youth longing embraced necessity that knows naught of patience.
Today I long not less, but my longing is friendly with patience, and even waiting.
And I know that all this desire that moves within me is one of those laws that turns universes around one another in quiet ecstasy, in swift passion which your eyes deem stillness, and your mind a mystery.
And in my youth I loved beauty and abhorred ugliness, for beauty was to me a world separated from all other worlds.
But now that the gracious years have lifted the veil of picking-and-choosing from over my eyes, I know that all I have deemed ugly in what I see and hear, is but a blinder upon my eyes, and wool in my ears;
And that our senses, like our neighbors, hate what they do not understand.
And in my youth I loved the fragrance of flowers and their color.
Now I know that their thorns are their innocent protection, and if it were not for that innocence they would disappear forevermore.
And in my youth, of all seasons I hated winter, for I said in my aloneness, “Winter is a thief who robs the earth of her sun-woven garment, and suffers her to stand naked in the wind.”
But now I know that in winter there is re-birth and renewal, and that the wind tears the old raiment to cloak her with a new raiment woven by the spring.
And in my youth I would gaze upon the sun of the day and the stars of the night, saying in my secret, “How small am I, and how small a circle my dream makes.”
But today when I stand before the sun or the stars I cry, “The sun is close to me, and the stars are upon me;” for all the distances of my youth have turned into the nearness of age;
And the great aloneness which knows not what is far and what is near, nor what is small nor great, has turned into a vision that weighs not nor does it measure.
In my youth I was but the slave of the high tide and the ebb tide of the sea, and the prisoner of half moons and full moons.
Today I stand at this shore and I rise not nor do I go down.
Even my roots once every twenty-eight days would seek the heart of the earth.
And on the twenty-ninth day they would rise toward the throne of the sky.
And on that very day the rivers in my veins would stop for a moment, and then would run again to the sea.
Yes, in my youth I was a thing, sad and yielding, and all the seasons played with me and laughed in their hearts.
And life took a fancy to me and kissed my young lips, and slapped my cheeks.
Today I play with the seasons. And I steal a kiss from life’s lips ere she kisses my lips.
And I even hold her hands playfully that she may not strike my cheek.
In my youth I was sad indeed, and all things seemed dark and distant.
Today, all is radiant and near, and for this I would live my youth and the pain of my youth, again and yet again.
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| Poet Adam Micklewicz |
No Heart, no Spirit – Lo! cadaverous crowds!
O Youth! Pass me thy wings,
And let me o’er the dead earth soar;
Let me vanish in delusion’s clouds,
Where many the Zeal begets a wonder
And grows a flower of novelty up yonder,
Adorned in Hope’s enamellings.
Who by his elder age shall darkened be
His toilsome forehead to the ground bent low,
Let him no more perceive or know
Than his thus lowered selfish eyes may see.
Youth! Up and over the horizons rise,
And smoothly penetrate
With Thy all-seeing eyes
The nations small and great.
Lo there! The space of dearth,
Where putrid vapors in the chaos wrestle:
’Tis Earth!
Up from the waters where the dead wind blows
A shell-clad Reptile rose.
He is his own rudder, sailor and vessel.
He often dives and rises up with little trouble,
For some smaller brutes he craves,
The waves cleave not to him nor he to the waves;
And suddenly he bumps upon a rock and bursts like a bubble.
Nobody knew his life, and of his death nobody wists.
Egoists!
Oh Youth! The ambrosia of life be Thine
When I with friends do share the time so sweet
When youthful hearts at heav’nly feasting meet
And golden threads around them all entwine.
En masse, Young Friends!
In happiness our ends.
Strong in unison, reasoned in rage:
Move on, Young Friends!
And happy he that perished in the strife
If for the others he’d prepared the stage
Of fame and honored life.
En masse, Young Friends!
Though steep and icy be our path
Though force and frailty guard the door:
When force is used, with force respond and wrath;
While young, upon our frailty wage a war.
Who, as a child, detached foul Hydra’s head,
In Youth, shall strangle Centaurs even;
Snatch victims from the Devil dread,
And for the laurels march to Heaven.
Up and reach the places out of sight,
Break that to which the brain can do no harm!
Youth! Mighty as an eagle’s is Thy flight,
As a thunderbolt – Thine arm!
Hey, arm to arm! by chains
Let’s bind the earth around;
To one focus bring each sound,
To one focus spirits bring and brains!
Move on, Thou Clod! Leave the foundations of the world!
We’ll make Thee roll where Thou hast never rolled,
When finally vanishes from Thee the mold,
Green years shall be once more, Thy sails unfurled.
Since in the land of darkness and of night,
The Elements have fallen out;
By a simple “Let there be”, due to Heaven’s might,
The world of things is made;
Gales are blowing, shelters give no shade,
And soon the stars will brighten Heaven all about;
While in the land of men a night so dumb,
The elements of Will are yet at war;
But Love shall soon burst forth like fire;
Out of the dark, the world of Soul will come,
In Youth’s conceived desire,
By friendship braced forever more.
The ice, so long unmoved, is bursting now,
With superstitions that have dimmed the light.
Hail, Dawn of Liberty! Oh, Long live Thou!
Thou carriest the Redeeming Sun so bright.
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| poet William Wordsworth |
The child is father of the man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
(Wordsworth, "My Heart Leaps Up")
