I never found any use for birth or birthdays, dear comrades, till I knew what it was to love:
I could not tell how successful my life is by the number of those who love me: I could only tell that by the number of those I love:
I am victorious only when I have won my love of you from myself: winning your love of me from you is not enough:
And so this day though you may not gather me to you I gather you to me, body and spirit:
And so this day I count myself up, not in figures but in love, and say forgiving and jubilant things to my soul about us all.
I’M SO GLAD I WAS BORN
I’m so glad I was born. It seemed so right for me to come. And some day it will seem just right for me to go. Maybe not just yet but sometime. I dont know whether it matters much which side of mystery God feeds me on. I am fed. Here or there, nowhere or anywhere, I am joyous, a part of things, not to be skipped—an atom but for which the stars would not hold together. That’s enough for any sane man to know about himself. Yet that’s not all I know about myself. I know God made no mistake making me. Or making you, either. Saint or scoundrel, making anybody. I can see other things put aside for my entrance. The Lord said: Give him a show. So I was piloted to this earth-star. Nobody specially welcomed me. My father and mother were there. And a few others. Some may have been sorry. But luckily I was there and in my baby way welcomed myself. I did not rock in that first cradle and say nothing. Think of the journeys I had lived through and sung through before I got here. Think of gods and men and animals and suns and all sorts of soul stuffs and body stuffs that compounded to produce me. Is it any wonder I am stuck on myself after that? I would not be paying great tribute to what went before or to what is to come after if I did not stand here now in great pride and declare the wonder of my flesh and the wonder of my spirit. I tell you gods are all right. Yes, and the law of gravitation is all right. Yes, and Beethoven and Socrates and Lincoln were all right. But how about me? Am I not just as much all right? Suppose an impossibility. Suppose I had not been born. Suppose something had sidetracked me. What would have happened to eternity? I dont see how Jesus could have been passed by. Nor do I see how I can be passed by. God had to do it. When the time came for me God had no alternative. You might as well put off to-morrow as put off a man when his day has come. So I got my size and shape. I am as big as anything because nothing big or little could get along without me. I am as beautiful as anything because nothing beautiful could be beautiful without me. Do you call yourself a worm? That’s all right if you mean to honor the worm. But if you mean to abase yourself then you are unjust to the worm. I never ask myself: Do you know how little you are? I am always nudging myself in the ribs and asking: Do you realize how big you are? Nor how bad I am. No. But how good I am. Nor how possible it is for me to fail. No. But how impossible it is for me not to succeed. So you see how it is I am glad I was born. You may see how far back my reasons go. You may see how far ahead my reasons go. I have trailed no sable clouds of regret across my past. I drag no obstructing burden of doubt up to the door of the future. I keep all ways open to all life. I have received an inheritance. It crowds me to repletion with riches. It builds on after all traditional builders are done. It is fiery with extra-mortal inspirations. Which all comes with being glad I was born. I hear people speak of being born right. Was anybody ever born wrong? I was born incomplete but I was born right. The complete invites the incomplete. I was not put here finished. I was put here on the way. I would be sorry if I thought I was born finished. A man born finished, his task is done. He could retire. That would be the mistake. But the cosmos never errs. The cosmos is process. It is not end. So I’m glad I was born. Glad for the grief. Glad for the joy. Satisfied to struggle. To fall in hell and pick myself up in heaven. Satisfied with the devil in me and the god in me working off their equal debts. I’m glad I was born. I might go on using words forever saying that. Yet my account would only then begin to be paid. I’m so glad I was born.
I’m so glad I was born. And you are one of my reasons for being glad. You were born, too. And I hope you are as glad about me as I am glad about you. I hope you are glad you were born. They say this is a vale of tears. So it is. It is also a vale of laughter. And laughter and tears give life a single purpose. And laughter in tears is glorious. Do you think I try to hide sorrow from myself? It sweetens the sap of the tree. I take sorrow for the uses of joy. I dont let sorrow get away with the field. I dont let the bad increase and crowd out salvation. I’m so glad I was born. There’s so much work to do. And I’m glad I was born just this time. If I had been given a choice of all ages I would have chosen just this age. Not old Greece with all its art or old Rome with all its conquests or France in eighty-nine or America in seventy-six or sixty-one. No age of Pericles for me. No Weimar. No Granada. No Elizabethan era. No age of privileged exceptions. Give me the Bowery and nineteen hundred six. Give me the democratic rule. God anticipated my whim and said: Humor him—it wont hurt. So I came along as well prophesied as anybody. And I know it wont hurt. It will help. Do you suppose I mean nothing? Then if I mean nothing God means nothing and the stars mean nothing and the love in your heart means nothing. I am not in doubt about my power and my style. The earth wont be just the same after I am done. It will be different and better. I am appointed to make it better. So are you. Do you not see that plainly indicated everywhere: So are you? I will not bray a path into history. Nor fill ostentatious offices. Nor be recognized as the supreme master this or that of a profession. But the universe cant spare me. I, too, must mount the cross. The universe needs my mediation. I know I was not produced for nothing. It cost a heap to produce me. I must catch up with an immense ancestral obligation. I must make good for my cosmic bed and board. I have got to prove that the first atom in faraway time knew what it was about when it attracted and repulsed and dreamed towards me. I’ve got to justify all of my ancestors and I’ve got to lay my plans so my descendants will justify me. I must pass everything on with something added to it. Music with more music. Painting with more painting. Good books with more good books. All the noble work of man with more noble work of men added. No way turning the tide back. With happiness enough in me to last all the misery out. With light enough in me to last all the misery out. With light enough in me to last all the darkness out. With strength enough in me to last all the weakness out. Sad, too, for those in grief. But gladder, too, for those who are reprieved. Certain that whatever may come no eclipsing harm can come. Certain that no raindrop in the universe can lose its way. Certain that we are jealously cared for though we do not always see the hand that cares and though that hand is sometimes cruel. When I see how much there is in my life to be glad for I forget that there is anything in my life to be sorry for. I have no quarrel with the barbarous minute the hour is so gentle. With the contrary day the yielding year is so conciliatory. With distorted ages the symmetry of time is so perfect. I do not feel like a waif lost somehow in chaos. I am at home in the midst of order. It seems worth while to live in a universe that is making, that has not made, its title. The universe did not do all its work the first day. It said to itself: I’ll always leave something over for the workers to do. It said to itself: Traubel will come some day: leave something over for Traubel. It said to itself: Or anybody, everybody, millions of bodies, will come some day: leave something over for them all. The cosmos is left at loose ends here and there. That was just meant for you. Go to work on it. Dont fret and growl. Dont sit down and cry and tell yourself that it’s a rather shameful cosmos anyway and might have been immaculate if it had chosen to. No. Be a cosmos yourself. Be a god or a first assistant or a fourth remove man or somebody and put in a bit of perfection over your own name. Get into the nebulous push somewhere. Drag, shove, pull, lift: do something to add to the active substance of deity. I’m mighty glad so much was left over. I dont want to send in to the celestial court any excuse for default. The lords god may say: We need not worry: our brother is there. The lords god know what they are about. They know their brother can be relied on. They may sleep without bad dreams. Does it ever occur to you to give the overworked gods a rest and get busy yourself? The heart’s good will should come out of the heart with gladness on its lips. The song should be glad it got done. It should lift its tones in praise. I am glad I got done. I lift my tones in praise. Creation belongs to gladness. Can anything that is sorry it was born give birth to life that will be glad it is alive? Laughter is the headline and footnote and signature of creation. When the dream to be a man became a man cosmos laughed. It was happy. It had done a creditable job. When a man somewhere lived love’s equal and final life with a woman somewhere and a child somewhere flamed from the mutual fire, the sun laughed in kinder beams of light and the starshine smiled over the cradled hope. I go everywhere saying I am glad I was born. It is such an innocent thing to say. It seems so like a child to say it. Yet I never heard you say it. I am waiting to hear you say it. I want to hear you say it once. Then I want to hear you say it always. Get in the habit of saying it. So possessed you cant help saying it. No matter who or what says no saying yes yourself. Saying it to yourself when you are alone, saying it to us, saying it in silences, saying it out loud. No: I never heard you say it. I have heard you read the riot act on creation. I have heard you growl like a bear and squeak like a rat. I have heard you tell how bad life is. Not how good life is: no: how bad. How bad a toothache is. Not how good a sound tooth is: no: how bad. There are bleak winds and consuming fires. I have been frostbitten and burned. Why should you make so much the most of misery and so much the least of health? Why should you enter all the charges and none of the credits? Why should you not put in a figure or two on the other side and admit the balance of benefit? What’s the use always going down stream? Why not also go up with the flood? I am possessed with gladness. I can see that all the worlds groan and travail in laughter. I can see that the shadow laughs in the sun. I can see that the wrongs laugh in the right. I can see the greeds that destroy laugh in the generosities that save. I can see all that is crooked in the social order laughing itself into all that will be straight in the social order. Over all I prevail: I, too, god by heritage, recreating the forever recreated stars. I, too, adding more gladness to the multiplied gladness of time. I, too, pouring out of my limitless stores limitless streams of rejoicing. I, too, an equal maker and sustainer of undoubted life. I, too, smiling back order into any chaos. I, too, always merry and rejuvenescent. I who am so glad I was born.
I’m so glad I was born. I like to tell about that. I like to say it to people who want to hear and to people who do not want to hear. I like to tell it to the man who is about to give up. I notice that he begins again. I like to tell it to the musician who thinks his inspiration is all gone. I notice that now he writes the finest songs ever. I like to tell it to the lover who is not loved. I notice that he is afterwards satisfied to love, not crazy to be loved. I like to tell it to the man who is robbed and to the man who robs. I notice that both hear me right for both see that it is better to be robbed than to rob. I like to tell it to the sick. The sick take hope. The sick, too, say: We are glad we were born. Glad to be born even if born to sickness. (Though no one is born to sickness.) And gladness is forever the footway of dreams. I can go to the injustices of the world with my joy. I am not afraid that the injustices can refute my joy. For injustice never can refute justice. My jubilant rhapsodies will prevail. They will go where nothing else will go. They will go where arguments will not go and figures will not go. They will go where logic will not go and law will not go. They will go where the pride of faith will not go and the humility of faith will not go. They will go where the sun will not go and the rains will not go. I say I’m glad I was born. I am good seed for any ground. No soil could be so bad my seed is not good for it. I am good will for any life. No life could be so poor my seed is not rich for it. I am the victorious day that comes after every other day has come and failed. I am the courage that comes after every other resolution has come and failed. I am everything true that comes after everything false has come and failed. I am the conquering work of your brains and your hands that comes after all other work has come and failed. I’m so glad I was born. Glad for the universe. What luck it was to the universe the day I was born. I feel that the universe was full paid all old credits that day. I came. I do not hesitate to tell anybody how magnificent I am. I do not try to divert attention from myself by calling attention to the earth that is so many miles through and the sun that is so many degrees hot. I let the devastators do that. I see how much more than their less I amount to. Earths and suns are only a meager per cent. to the plenty of my exaltation. You cant take earths and suns to your heart. But you can take me to your heart. You cant take your degrees and decorations to your heart. They always fall short of solace and must fall short. But you can take me to your heart. I never fall short. You cant take your position in society to your heart. You cant take your overcapitalized name to your heart. You cant take your riches to your heart. Oh, you cant take your riches, all your thousands, all your houses, all your swell possessions, to your heart: and they cost you much. But you can take me to your heart, you can take my eyes that see and ears that hear to your heart, you can take my announcements of immortal life to your heart: they never default, never fall short: and they cost you nothing. I guess I have said all I can say about that. I have got so far in my raptures now I have got beyond words. You must get the rest without words. I’m so glad I was born.
And so I have come to sing life: I have come to bring that which is hidden to the surface: