Car poems
/ page 655 of 738 /
A Rolling Stone
© Robert William Service
There's sunshine in the heart of me,
My blood sings in the breeze;
The mountains are a part of me,
I'm fellow to the trees.
Only A Boche
© Robert William Service
Heigh-ho! My turn for the dummy hand; I rise and I stretch a bit;
The fetid air is making me yawn, and my cigarette's unlit,
So I go to the nearest candle flame, and the man we brought is there,
And his face is white in the shabby light, and I stand at his feet and stare.
Stand for a while, and quietly stare: for strange though it seems to be,
The dying Boche on the stretcher there has a queer resemblance to me.
The Odyssey Of 'Erbert 'Iggins
© Robert William Service
Me and Ed and a stretcher
Out on the nootral ground.
(If there's one dead corpse, I'll betcher
There's a 'undred smellin' around.)
Joey
© Robert William Service
I thought I would go daft when Joey died.
He was my first, and wise beyond his years.
For nigh a hundred nights I cried and cried,
Until my weary eyes burned up my tears.
Willie and Rosie tried to comfort me:
A woeful, weeping family were we.
Familiarity
© Robert William Service
Familiarity some claim
Can breed contempt,
So from it let it be your aim
To be exempt.
Compensation Pete
© Robert William Service
He used to say: There ain't a doubt
Misfortune is a bitter pill,
But if you only pry it out
You'll find there's good in every ill.
The Telegraph Operator
© Robert William Service
I will not wash my face;
I will not brush my hair;
I "pig" around the place--
There's nobody to care.
Room Ghost
© Robert William Service
Though elegance I ill afford,
My living-room is green and gold;
The former tenant was a lord
Who died of drinking, I am told.
I fancy he was rather bored;
I don't think he was over old.
Stamp Collector
© Robert William Service
My worldly wealth I hoard in albums three,
My life collection of rare postage stamps;
My room is cold and bare as you can see,
My coat is old and shabby as a tramp's;
Yet more to me than balances in banks,
My albums three are worth a million francs.
The Legless Man
© Robert William Service
My mind goes back to Fumin Wood, and how we stuck it out,
Eight days of hunger, thirst and cold, mowed down by steel and flame;
Waist-deep in mud and mad with woe, with dead men all about,
We fought like fiends and waited for relief that never came.
Eight days and nights they rolled on us in battle-frenzied mass!
"Debout les morts!" We hurled them back. By God! they did not pass.
Julot The Apache
© Robert William Service
You've heard of Julot the apache, and Gigolette, his mome. . . .
Montmartre was their hunting-ground, but Belville was their home.
A little chap just like a boy, with smudgy black mustache, --
Yet there was nothing juvenile in Julot the apache.
Wistful
© Robert William Service
Oh how I'd be gay and glad
If a little house I had,
Snuggled in a shady lot,
With behind a garden plot;
While The Bannock Bakes
© Robert William Service
Light up your pipe again, old chum, and sit awhile with me;
I've got to watch the bannock bake -- how restful is the air!
You'd little think that we were somewhere north of Sixty-three,
Though where I don't exactly know, and don't precisely care.
Tipperary Days
© Robert William Service
Oh, weren't they the fine boys! You never saw the beat of them,
Singing all together with their throats bronze-bare;
Fighting-fit and mirth-mad, music in the feet of them,
Swinging on to glory and the wrath out there.
Pooch
© Robert William Service
Nurse, won't you let him in?
He's barkin' an' scratchen' the door,
Makin' so dreffel a din
I jest can't sleep any more;
Black Moran
© Robert William Service
The mule-skinner was Bill Jerome, the passengers were three;
Two tinhorns from the dives of Nome, and Father Tim McGee.
And as for sunny Southland bound, through weary woods they sped,
The solitude that ringed them round was silent as the dead.
The Trail Of Ninety-Eight
© Robert William Service
Gold! We leapt from our benches. Gold! We sprang from our stools.
Gold! We wheeled in the furrow, fired with the faith of fools.
Fearless, unfound, unfitted, far from the night and the cold,
Heard we the clarion summons, followed the master-lure--Gold!
The Ballad Of How Macpherson Held The Floor
© Robert William Service
Said President MacConnachie to Treasurer MacCall:
"We ought to have a piper for our next Saint Andrew's Ball.
Yon squakin' saxophone gives me the syncopated gripes.
I'm sick of jazz, I want to hear the skirling of the pipes."
Annuitant
© Robert William Service
Oh I am neither rich nor poor,
No worker I dispoil;
Yet I am glad to be secure
From servitude and toil.
The Blind And The Dead
© Robert William Service
She lay like a saint on her copper couch;
Like an angel asleep she lay,
In the stare of the ghoulish folks that slouch
Past the Dead and sneak away.
