Young men and men with eyes alive and quick,

With health and passion in the way you walk:

Women with hands delighting now in furs

To touch, now polished wood: women who talk

Aware of webs that whirl from mind to mind:

Women and men for whom the air is clear,

And time a wave at crest: women and men

Whose honor is the blood: I greet you here.

Remember here, count now with me your luck.

Outdoors the night leans hard against the house,

The dead lie dreamless and historical.

But here such ample revelations rouse

That darkness topples backward; here the hand

Touches a corner of the flying page

Wherefrom we learn to make our peace with time,

To go with no rebellion toward old age.

We are the living, on this keel of earth,

Who hail the convoy stars across the night,

Or feed joy's bird, and stroke his folded wing,

Then fling him flying toward the stream of light.

We are the living; daylight in our eyes;

Earth under heel; and in the mouth a word;

Fire in the fingers; question in the mind;

And round the throat a slowly tightening cord.

Now give heart's onward habit brave intent:

Hammer the golden day until it lies

A glimmering plate to heap with memory;

Salute the arriving moment with your eyes;

It brings extravagant and famous gifts:

Trees: they grow up in green and florid grace

As darker downward grow the boughs of root;

The wind: a sprawling, towering sea in space;

And light, light: on the upper side of earth

It lies, and on the under side of cloud;

We are the living, who in light between

Go forth at morning blest and golden-browed,

And on our shoulders wear the afternoon;

Light is the last fact and the first that falls

On mortal eyes, and while they stare at time,

Light is a calendar on outdoor walls;

People: I watch them walking in the street,

The crippled ones, the lonely ones, the loud,

The deft and delicate, the old and tame,

The ardent ones, the evil, the abrupt and proud;

And books: they give a room a thousand doors;

Color: it is an infinite map unrolled

For exploration, where the travelling eye

Adventures more than memory can hold,

And misty weather blows to blue and clean

Over its charted boundaries and shores.

Remember color, bid the moment stay,

Touching the gaudy leaf to make it yours;

Touch frosty iron; crumple the written sheet;

In darkness find the stair-rail's friendly wood;

Here where you clasped another hand, now say,

This was the one I loved, and here we stood."

But think of pain that, offering no remorse,

No hate, stabs you, and stays to stab again.

Living, we risk that wound, for pain goes armed,

The sword two-edged with self and fellow-men.

And pain's more cunning weapons reach the mind,

Putting a scar on wisdom, though it heal:

We risk the jeer of treachery; the blur

Of shrewdness on a mouth; the violent seal

Of sudden hatred stamped upon a face;

And bruising fear; and the harsh rack of mind

At waste, at promise twisted into truth,

At narrow caution, shabby and unkind.

Then think no pain but these can threaten us.

We chose to live by living: take them both,

All sharp delight, and danger with its blade.

The mind will have such hardy grace in growth,

Learning to parry life and plunder it,

That more than this the living will not need.

Who but a ghost would gaze on bright and dark,

And shut his ghostly heart, and give no heed?

We live, we are elected now by time,

Few out of many not yet come to birth,

And many dead, to use the daylight now,

To stand up under the sun upon the earth.

Then break the silence with a voice of praise;

Open the door that opens toward the sky;

Press mind and body hard against this world,

Before we fall asleep, before we die.