| MYSELF and mine gymnastic ever, | |
| To stand the cold or heat—to take good aim with a gun—to sail a boat—to manage horses—to beget superb children, | |
| To speak readily and clearly—to feel at home among common people, | |
| And to hold our own in terrible positions, on land and sea. | |
| |
| Not for an embroiderer; | 5 |
| (There will always be plenty of embroiderers—I welcome them also;) | |
| But for the fibre of things, and for inherent men and women. | |
| |
| Not to chisel ornaments, | |
| But to chisel with free stroke the heads and limbs of plenteous Supreme Gods, that The States may realize them, walking and talking. | |
| |
| Let me have my own way; | 10 |
| Let others promulge the laws—I will make no account of the laws; | |
| Let others praise eminent men and hold up peace—I hold up agitation and conflict; | |
| I praise no eminent man—I rebuke to his face the one that was thought most worthy. | |
| |
| (Who are you? you mean devil! And what are you secretly guilty of, all your life? | |
| Will you turn aside all your life? Will you grub and chatter all your life?) | 15 |
| |
| (And who are you—blabbing by rote, years, pages, languages, reminiscences, | |
| Unwitting to-day that you do not know how to speak a single word?) | |
| |
| Let others finish specimens—I never finish specimens; | |
| I shower them by exhaustless laws, as Nature does, fresh and modern continually. | |
| |
| I give nothing as duties; | 20 |
| What others give as duties, I give as living impulses; | |
| (Shall I give the heart’s action as a duty?) | |
| |
| Let others dispose of questions—I dispose of nothing—I arouse unanswerable questions; | |
| Who are they I see and touch, and what about them? | |
| What about these likes of myself, that draw me so close by tender directions and indirections? | 25 |
| |
| I call to the world to distrust the accounts of my friends, but listen to my enemies—as I myself do; | |
| I charge you, too, forever, reject those who would expound me—for I cannot expound myself; | |
| I charge that there be no theory or school founded out of me; | |
| I charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free. | |
| |
| After me, vista! | 30 |
| O, I see life is not short, but immeasurably long; | |
| I henceforth tread the world, chaste, temperate, an early riser, a steady grower, | |
| Every hour the semen of centuries—and still of centuries. | |
| |
| I will follow up these continual lessons of the air, water, earth; | |
| I perceive I have no time to lose. | 35 |
