Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

We two, how long we were fool'd,
Now transmuted, we swiftly escape as Nature escapes,
We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return…

Du hav! jeg hengir meg også til deg ... jeg gjetter hva du vil,
Jeg ser dine krumme lokkende fingre fra stranden,
Jeg tror du nekter å trekke deg tilbake før du har følt meg nær,
Vi to må gå en runde sammen ... jeg kler av meg ... skynder meg ut av syne
    for land,
Bær meg mykt ... vugg meg i gyngende døs,
Dynk meg med ditt kjærlige skum ... jeg skal gi deg tilbake.

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and
self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of
owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of
years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

Never more shall I escape,
Never more shall the reverberations,
Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent
from me,
Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was
before what there, in the night,
By the sea, under the yellow and sagging moon,
The dusky demon aroused, the fire, the sweet hell
within,
The unknown want, the destiny of me.

We have voided all but freedom and all but our own joy