Hope poems
/ page 393 of 439 /
Comfort
© Robert William Service
Say! You've struck a heap of trouble --
Bust in business, lost your wife;
No one cares a cent about you,
You don't care a cent for life;
Old Codger
© Robert William Service
Of garden truck he made his fare,
As his bright eyes bore witness;
Health was his habit and his care,
His hobby human fitness.
Death And Life
© Robert William Service
'Twas in the grave-yard's gruesome gloom
That May and I were mated;
We sneaked inside and on a tomb
Our love was consummated.
The Song Of The Soldier-Born
© Robert William Service
Give me the scorn of the stars and a peak defiant;
Wail of the pines and a wind with the shout of a giant;
Night and a trail unknown and a heart reliant.
The Other One
© Robert William Service
"Gather around me, children dear;
The wind is high and the night is cold;
Closer, little ones, snuggle near;
Let's seek a story of ages old;
The Damned
© Robert William Service
Behind blind walls I see them go,
Grim spectres of eternal woe,
Drained grey of hope, dead souls of self-slain,--
And yet I know with pang of pain
It must be so.
Comrades
© Robert William Service
Oh bear with me, for I am old
And count on fingers five
The years this pencil I may hold
And hope to be alive;
The Death Of Marie Toro
© Robert William Service
And then last week I missed her, and they found her in the street
One morning early, huddled down, for it was freezing cold;
But when they raised her ragged shawl her face was still and sweet;
Some bits of broken bloom were clutched within her icy hold.
That's all. . . . Ah yes, they say that saw: her blue, wide-open eyes
Were beautiful with joy again, with radiant surprise. . . .
A Song Of Sixty-Five
© Robert William Service
Brave Thackeray has trolled of days when he was twenty-one,
And bounded up five flights of stairs, a gallant garreteer;
And yet again in mellow vein when youth was gaily run,
Has dipped his nose in Gascon wine, and told of Forty Year.
Artist
© Robert William Service
He gave a picture exhibition,
Hiring a little empty shop.
Above its window: FREE ADMISSION
Cajoled the passers-by to stop;
Cows
© Robert William Service
I love to watch my seven cows
In meads of buttercups abrowse,
With guilded knees;
But even more I love to see
Them chew the cud so tranquilly
In twilight ease.
The Cat With Wings
© Robert William Service
You never saw a cat with wings,
I'll bet a dollar -- well, I did;
'Twas one of those fantastic things
One runs across in old Madrid.
My Ancestors
© Robert William Service
A barefoot boy I went to school
To save a cobbler's fee,
For though the porridge pot was full
A frugal folk were we;
We baked our bannocks, spun our wool,
And counted each bawbee.
Immortality
© Robert William Service
Full well I trow that when I die
Down drops the curtain;
Another show is all my eye
And Betty Martin.
The Under-Dogs
© Robert William Service
What have we done, Oh Lord, that we
Are evil starred?
How have we erred and sinned to be
So scourged and scarred?
To Frank Dodd
© Robert William Service
Since four decades you've been to me
Both Guide and Friend,
I fondly hope you'll always be,
Right to the end;
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.
The Wee Shop
© Robert William Service
She risked her all, they told me, bravely sinking
The pinched economies of thirty years;
And there the little shop was, meek and shrinking,
The sum of all her dreams and hopes and fears.
Charity
© Robert William Service
Her patient heart was full of hope,
For health she gave God thanks,
Till one day in an envelope
I sealed a thousand francs,
And 'neath her door for her to see
I slipped it secretly.
The Philistine And The Bohemian
© Robert William Service
And what is the moral of all this rot?
Don't try to be what you know you're not.
And if you're made on a muttonish plan,
Don't seek to seem a Bohemian;
And if to the goats your feet incline,
Don't try to pass for a Philistine.
