Classic Poem

Let me be cheerful for you all: cheerful, forever cheerful, for you all:
Even when the malign seems to happen instead of the merciful, let me be cheerful for you all:
Let me bring the sunshine to you who are in darkness: to all of you:
Let me bring dancing and joy to you who are in despair to all of you:
I will lift you up out of danger with my laugh: all of you — all of you:
I will put my arm under you whether you deserve it or not and charge you with farther faith,
I will be like another earth for you to stand on and be sure of,
I will be like another sky for other suns to shine out of upon your head,
I will smilingly cushion your hurts and stir your last hope to discovery with my hurrahs:
I will not be reasonable or show sense but I will be cheerful:
I will not be afraid to face the music: I will face it though there's death in it with cheer:
For it is my business being so extra much alive to be cheerful: to be cheerful for all,
As it would equally be my business if I was extra much dead to die if I could no longer be cheerful — cheerful for all.

Being cheerful for all does not mean not to suffer — not to lose:
It does not mean not knowing enough to know pain: it means knowing too much to know pain:
I, too, have gone as far down as anybody into hell: I have not asked to be spared:
How otherwise would I be able to take you so far up up into heaven?
Do you think that because you see me going about looking so well satisfied with things that I am heartless?
Why, it is my heart that makes me gay and sufficient — that steadies and saves me:
My heart goes freely everywhere and brings me back beautiful reports of men:
Brings me back witnesses, lovers, those who work for others, crowding me with divine guests:
My heart going where nothing else of me could go and bringing me back that which nothing else of me could bring.
You do not see me when I am sorry for myself — when I, too, go into my closet with my own soul:
You do not see me when I am driven here and there in the night wondering whether love is in the end worth its keep:
And yet I pass only by the usual route to joy — I go only by the common path to cheer:
There could be no yes where there is no no to provoke it: no vision where there is no blindness:
I am not cheerful because I suffer less but because I suffer more than you suffer:
I enter upon my cheer through the gate of grief for I know what is within
When you see a little you die but when you see more you live:
And so as we journey together I will be cheerful for you when you cant be cheerful for yourself,
And I will pick up my brothers who have fallen not with my hands but with my cheer,
And I will revive my brothers who have succumbed to adversity not with cash out of a bank but with cheer out of my red blood:
For my cheer will go where no touch of the body can go, where no gold of realms can go:
And you who once alien become at home among men and stars must acknowledge and hail me.

Let me say something more, dear comrades, you men and women and children the world over:
I am not cheerful for you all because I am alone necessary to you: that would put my price too high:
I am cheerful for you all because you are also necessary to me: that fixes the just value upon my place:
I am not above you or below you but in the midst of you keeping my appointments:
I merely give back in a small way to you that which you have lavished upon me till I choke with plenty.
You do not perhaps know what that is — what it all issues from and goes towards,
But I know it all comes from you — that but for you it would not exist and I as I am would not exist,
And so I am richly cheerful for you all without being cheaply important for myself,
And I am better than armies and markets to you when treachery has balked your trust,
And I have no more right to be down in the mouth than to put out the sun,
For I must always make it clear to the countless numbers that wait for me that I also wait for them,
And that cheer is due other men from me: whatever they come to me with, is due to them,
And that anything less than cheer would be so much less than life and so much amounting to murder,
And that I for my part whatever you do owe the crowd my succoring trumpet cry —
Though there is no way to explain it, owe the crowd the first word and last word of illumination.

You who must mourn, mourn — cry your fill: lament:
You who have lost all have not lost me: take what comfort you can of me:
I will be cheerful for you all: nothing can occur to confute my cheer:
Go round if you must bent sad bereaved: give your years up to your days:
I do not ask you to gambol with me in this frolic of my inimitable feet:
I will be cheerful enough to rejoice for all: I will add cheer to cheer till my total is adequate for all and beyond:
And so now you know why I am seen everywhere strong insolent erect and happy,
And you know why I slap every funeral on the back and startle it laughing out of its formulas and mockeries and blasphemies,
And you know why no argument could dispose of me because I am not reasonable and why no argument could start where I start from and follow me to my results,
And that is why you will let me be cheerful for you all: cheerful, forever cheerful, for you all.