Good poems
/ page 485 of 545 /
An Epicure
© Robert William Service
Should you preserve white mice in honey
Don't use imported ones from China,
For though they cost you less in money
You'll find the Japanese ones finer.
Causation
© Robert William Service
Said darling daughter unto me:
"oh Dad, how funny it would be
If you had gone to Mexico
A score or so of years ago.
The Petit Vieux
© Robert William Service
Watch me, how I'll learn to chaff barmaids in a bar;
Scotches daily, gayly quaff, puff a fierce cigar.
I will haunt the Tango teas, at the stage-door stand;
Wait for Dolly Dimpleknees, bouquet in my hand.
God's Battleground
© Robert William Service
God dwells in you; in pride and shame,
In all you do to blight or bless;
In all you are of praise and blame,
In beauty or in ugliness.
"Divine Creation" - What a fraud!
God did not make you . . . You make God.
Prayer
© Robert William Service
You talk o' prayer an' such -
Well, I jest don't know how;
I guess I got as much
Religion as a cow.
Bill's Grave
© Robert William Service
I'm gatherin' flowers by the wayside to lay on the grave of Bill;
I've sneaked away from the billet, 'cause Jim wouldn't understand;
'E'd call me a silly fat'ead, and larf till it made 'im ill,
To see me 'ere in the cornfield, wiv a big bookay in me 'and.
Lindy Lou
© Robert William Service
If the good King only knew,
Lindy Lou,
What a cherub child are you,
It is true,
The Cuckoo
© Robert William Service
No lyric line I ever penned
The praise this parasitic bird;
And what is more, I don't intend
To write a laudatory word,
Poet's Path
© Robert William Service
My garden hath a slender path
With ivy overgrown,
A secret place where once would pace
A pot all alone;
The Faceless Man
© Robert William Service
I'm dead.
Officially I'm dead. Their hope is past.
How long I stood as missing! Now, at last
I'm dead.
The Law Of The Yukon
© Robert William Service
This is the Law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive;
That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive.
Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,
This is the Will of the Yukon, -- Lo, how she makes it plain!
A Song Of The Sandbags
© Robert William Service
No, Bill, I'm not a-spooning out no patriotic tosh
(The cove be'ind the sandbags ain't a death-or-glory cuss).
And though I strafes 'em good and 'ard I doesn't 'ate the Boche,
I guess they're mostly decent, just the same as most of us.
The Ballad Of Salvation Bill
© Robert William Service
'Twas in the bleary middle of the hard-boiled Arctic night,
I was lonesome as a loon, so if you can,
Imagine my emotions of amazement and delight
When I bumped into that Missionary Man.
The Spell Of The Yukon
© Robert William Service
I wanted the gold, and I sought it,
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy -- I fought it;
I hurled my youth into a grave.
I'm Scared Of It All
© Robert William Service
To be forming good habits up there;
To be starving on rabbits up there;
In your hunger and woe,
Though it's sixty below,
Oh, I know that it's safer up there!
My Book
© Robert William Service
Before I drink myself to death,
God, let me finish up my Book!
At night, I fear, I fight for breath,
And wake up whiter than a spook;
And crawl off to a bistro near,
And drink until my brain is clear.
My Friends
© Robert William Service
The man above was a murderer, the man below was a thief;
And I lay there in the bunk between, ailing beyond belief;
A weary armful of skin and bone, wasted with pain and grief.
Lucille
© Robert William Service
Oh, the Prince was glad, I could soon see that, and the Princess she was too;
And Lucille waltzed round on the tablecloth as she often used to do.
And the Prince pulled out a purse of gold, and he put it in my hand;
And he says: "It was worth all that, I'm told, to stay in that nasty land."
And then he turned with a sudden cry, and he clutched at his royal beard;
And the Princess screamed, and well she might -- for Lucille had disappeared.
Bill's Prayer
© Robert William Service
I never thought that Bill could say
A proper prayer;
'Twas more in his hard-bitten way
To cuss and swear;
The Womb
© Robert William Service
Up from the evil day
Of wattle and of woad,
Along man's weary way
Dark Pain has been the goad.
