Smile poems
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Jobson Of The Star
© Robert William Service
Within a pub that's off the Strand and handy to the bar,
With pipe in mouth and mug in hand sat Jobson of the Star.
"Come, sit ye down, ye wond'ring wight, and have a yarn," says he.
"I can't," says I, "because to-night I'm off to Tripoli;
The Front Tooth
© Robert William Service
A-sittin' in the Bull and Pump
With double gins to keep us cheery
Says she to me, says Polly Crump"
"What makes ye look so sweet. me dearie?
As if ye'd gotten back yer youth . . . ."
Says I: "It's just me new front tooth."
Dedication
© Robert William Service
In youth I longed to paint
The loveliness I saw;
And yet by dire constraint
I had to study Law.
The Ballad Of Hank The Finn
© Robert William Service
Now Fireman Flynn met Hank the Finn where lights of Lust-land glow;
"Let's leave," says he, "the lousy sea, and give the land a show.
I'm fed up to the molar mark with wallopin' the brine;
I feel the bloody barnacles a-carkin' on me spine.
Let's hit the hard-boiled North a crack, where creeks are paved with gold."
"You count me in," says Hank the Finn. "Ay do as Ay ban told."
Death In The Arctic
© Robert William Service
I took the clock down from the shelf;
"At eight," said I, "I shoot myself."
It lacked a minute of the hour,
And as I waited all a-cower,
A skinful of black, boding pain,
Bits of my life came back again. . . .
Weary Waitress
© Robert William Service
She dreams . . . That lonely bank-clerk boy
Who comes each day for tea,--
Oh how his eyes light up with joy
Her comeliness to see!
And yet he is too shy to speak,
Far less to touch her cheek.
A Casualty
© Robert William Service
That boy I took in the car last night,
With the body that awfully sagged away,
And the lips blood-crisped, and the eyes flame-bright,
And the poor hands folded and cold as clay --
Oh, I've thought and I've thought of him all the day.
Two Husbands
© Robert William Service
Unpenitent, I grieve to state,
Two good men stood by heaven's gate,
Saint Peter coming to await.
The stopped the Keeper of the Keys,
Saying: "What suppliants are these,
Who wait me not on bended knees?
Men Of The High North
© Robert William Service
Men of the High North, the wild sky is blazing;
Islands of opal float on silver seas;
Swift splendors kindle, barbaric, amazing;
Pale ports of amber, golden argosies.
Bonehead Bill
© Robert William Service
I wonder 'oo and wot 'e was,
That 'Un I got so slick.
I couldn't see 'is face because
The night was 'ideous thick.
Nature's Way
© Robert William Service
To tribulations of mankind
Dame Nature is indifferent;
To human sorrow she is blind,
And deaf to human discontent.
My Hour
© Robert William Service
Day after day behold me plying
My pen within an office drear;
The dullest dog, till homeward hieing,
Then lo! I reign a king of cheer.
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.
The Man From Eldorado
© Robert William Service
He's the man from Eldorado, and he's just arrived in town,
In moccasins and oily buckskin shirt.
He's gaunt as any Indian, and pretty nigh as brown;
He's greasy, and he smells of sweat and dirt.
Learn To Like
© Robert William Service
School yourself to savour most
Joys that have but little cost;
Prove the best of life is free,
Sun and stars and sky and sea;
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 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.
On The Boulevard
© Robert William Service
Oh, it's pleasant sitting here,
Seeing all the people pass;
You beside your bock of beer,
I behind my demi-tasse.
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.
Romance
© Robert William Service
In Paris on a morn of May
I sent a radio transalantic
To catch a steamer on the way,
But oh the postal fuss was frantic;
