Life poems
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Roulette
© Robert William Service
I'll wait until my money's gone
Before I take the sleeping pills;
Then when they find me in the dawn,
Remote from earthly ails and ills
They'll say: "She's broke, the foreign bitch!"
And dump me in the common ditch.
The Atavist
© Robert William Service
What are you doing here, Tom Thorne, on the white top-knot o' the world,
Where the wind has the cut of a naked knife and the stars are rapier keen?
Hugging a smudgy willow fire, deep in a lynx robe curled,
You that's a lord's own son, Tom Thorne -- what does your madness mean?
At San Sebastian
© Robert William Service
The Countess sprawled beside the sea
As naked a she well could be;
Indeed her only garments were
A "G" string and a brassière
The Younger Son
© Robert William Service
If you leave the gloom of London and you seek a glowing land,
Where all except the flag is strange and new,
There's a bronzed and stalwart fellow who will grip you by the hand,
And greet you with a welcome warm and true;
Cocotte
© Robert William Service
When a girl's sixteen, and as poor as she's pretty,
And she hasn't a friend and she hasn't a home,
Heigh-ho! She's as safe in Paris city
As a lamb night-strayed where the wild wolves roam;
My Foe
© Robert William Service
Not for him the pity be.
Ye who pity, pity me,
Crawling now the ways I trod,
Blood-guilty in sight of God.
The Ballad Of The Brand
© Robert William Service
'Twas up in a land long famed for gold, where women were far and rare,
Tellus, the smith, had taken to wife a maiden amazingly fair;
Tellus, the brawny worker in iron, hairy and heavy of hand,
Saw her and loved her and bore her away from the tribe of a Southern land;
Deeming her worthy to queen his home and mother him little ones,
That the name of Tellus, the master smith, might live in his stalwart sons.
The Scribe's Prayer
© Robert William Service
When from my fumbling hand the tired pen falls,
And in the twilight weary droops my head;
While to my quiet heart a still voice calls,
Calls me to join my kindred of the Dead:
Grant that I may, O Lord, ere rest be mine,
Write to Thy praise one radiant, ringing line.
The Parson's Son
© Robert William Service
This is the song of the parson's son, as he squats in his shack alone,
On the wild, weird nights, when the Northern Lights shoot up from the frozen zone,
And it's sixty below, and couched in the snow the hungry huskies moan:
Retired Shopman
© Robert William Service
He had the grocer's counter-stoop,
That little man so grey and neat;
His moustache had a doleful droop,
He hailed me in the slushy street.
Atoll
© Robert William Service
The woes of men beyond my ken
Mean nothing more to me.
Behold my world, and Eden hurled
From Heaven to the Sea;
Vain Venture
© Robert William Service
To have a business of my own
With toil and tears,
I wore my fingers to the bone
For weary years.
Man Child
© Robert William Service
Then suddenly I see him rise,
Tall, stalwart and serene . . .
Lo! There he stands before my eyes,
The man he might have been.
Externalism
© Robert William Service
The Greatest Writer of to-day
(With Maupassant I almost set him)
Said to me in a weary way,
The last occasion that I met him:
Barb-Wire Bill
© Robert William Service
Oh God! all's lost . . . from Julie Claire there came a wail of pain,
And then -- the rope grew sudden taut, and quivered at the strain;
It slacked and slipped, it whined and gripped, and oh, I held my breath!
And there we hung and there we swung right in the jaws of death.
The Missal Makers
© Robert William Service
To visit the Escurial
We took a motor bus,
And there a guide mercurial
Took charge of us.
Little Puddleton
© Robert William Service
Let others sing of Empire and of pomp beyond the sea,
A song of Little Puddleton is good enough for me,
A song of kindly living, and of coming home to tea.
Red-Tiled Roof
© Robert William Service
Poets may praise a wattle thatch
Doubtfully waterproof;
Let me uplift my lowly latch
Beneath a rose-tiled roof.
The Squaw Man
© Robert William Service
The cow-moose comes to water, and the beaver's overbold,
The net is in the eddy of the stream;
The teepee stars the vivid sward with russet, red and gold,
And in the velvet gloom the fire's a-gleam.
The Logger
© Robert William Service
In the moonless, misty night, with my little pipe alight,
I am sitting by the camp-fire's fading cheer;
Oh, the dew is falling chill on the dim, deer-haunted hill,
And the breakers in the bay are moaning drear.
