Robert William Service

“ THE LONE TRAIL
Ye who know the Lone Trail fain would follow it,
Though it lead to glory or the darkness of the pit.
Ye who take the Lone Trail, bid your love good-by;
The Lone Trail, the Lone Trail follow till you die.
The trails of the world be countless, and most of the trails be tried;
You tread on the heels of the many, till you come where the ways divide;
And one lies safe in the sunlight, and the other is dreary and wan,
Yet you look aslant at the Lone Trail, and the Lone Trail lures you on. ”

“ To how few is granted the privilege of doing the work which lies closest to the heart, the work for which one is best fitted. The happy man is he who knows his limitations, yet bows to no false gods.
MacBean is not happy. He is overridden by his appetites, and to satisfy them he writes stuff that in his heart he despises.
Saxon Dane is not happy. His dream exceeds his grasp. His twisted, tortured phrases mock the vague grandiosity of his visions.
I am happy. My talent is proportioned to my ambition. The things I like to write are the things I like to read. ”

“ Everything hard but headwork (I'd no more brains than a kid) ,
A brute with brute strength to labor, doing as I was bid;
Living in camps with men-folk, a lonely and loveless life;
Never knew kiss of sweetheart, never caress of wife.
A brute with brute strength to labor, and they were so far above—
Yet I'd gladly have gone to the gallows for one little look of Love.
I, with the strength of two men, savage and shy and wild—
Yet how I'd ha' treasured a woman, and the sweet, warm kiss of a child!
Well, 'tis Thy world, and Thou knowest. I blaspheme and my ways be rude ”

“ Oh, Harley and Fanning and Barret, they were bloody good mates o’ mine;
Their bodies are empty bottles; Death has guzzled the wine;
What’s left of them’s filth and corruption.... Where is the Fire Divine?
I’ll tell you.... At night in the trenches, as I watch and I do my part,
Three radiant spirits I’m seeing, high heart revealing to heart.
And they’re building a peerless palace to the splendor and triumph of Art.
Yet, alas! for the fame of Barret, the glory he might have trailed! ”

“ There's a land where the mountains are nameless,
⁠And the rivers all run God knows where;
There are lives that are erring and aimless,
⁠And deaths that just hang by a hair;
There are hardships that nobody reckons;
⁠There are valleys unpeopled and still;
There's a land—oh, it beckons and beckons,
⁠And I want to go back—and I will.
They're making my money diminish;
⁠I'm sick of the taste of champagne.
Thank God! when I'm skinned to a finish
⁠I'll pike to the Yukon again.
I'll fight—and you bet it's no sham-fight ”

“ I wailed; “It never has been spent.”
And as I racked my brains to seek how I could raise some more,
Before my cruel landlord kicked me cowering from the door:
A knock... “Come in,” I gruffly groaned; I did not raise my head,
Then lo! I heard a husky voice, a swift and silky tread:
“You got so blind, last night, mon vieux, I collared all your cash—
Three hundred francs.... There! Nom de Dieu,” said Julot the apache.
And that was how I came to know Julot and Gigolette,
And we would talk and drink a bock, and smoke a cigarette. ”

“ Don't you remember that long, last waltz, with its sobbing, sad refrain?
⁠Don't you remember that last good-by, and the dear eyes dim with tears?
Don't you remember that golden dream, with never a hint of pain,
⁠Of lives that would blend like an angel-song in the bliss of the coming years?
Oh, what have I lost! What have I lost! Ethel, forgive, forgive!
⁠The red, red rose is faded now, and it's fifty years ago.
'Twere better to die a thousand deaths than live each day as I live! ”

“ I can look any man in the face and tell him to go to the devil. I belong to myself. I am not for sale. It’s glorious to feel like that. It sweetens the dry crust and warms the heart in the icy wind. For that I will hunger and go threadbare; for that I will live austerely and deny myself all pleasure. After health, the best thing in life is freedom. ”

“ I have followed its lure, fearless, familiar, alone;
By all that the battle means and makes I claim that land for mine own;
Yet the Wild must win, and a day will come when I shall be overthrown.
Then when as wolf-dogs fight we've fought, the lean wolf-land and I;
Fought and bled till the snows are red under the reeling sky;
Even as lean wolf-dog goes down will I go down and die. ”

“ A tourist horde from every land that’s underneath the sun—
That little wizened Spanish man, he misses never one.
Oh, foul or fair he’s always there, and many a drink he buys,
And there’s a fire of red desire within his hollow eyes.
And sipping of my Pernod, and a-knowing what I know,
Sometimes I want to shriek aloud and give away the show.
I’ve lost my nerve; he’s haunting me; he’s like a beast of prey,
That Spanish man that’s watching at the Café de la Paix.
Say! Listen and I’ll tell you all... the day was growing dim,
And I was with my Pernod at the table next to him ”

“ Ah yes, how glorious is life!
I thank Him for each day of it.”
“How good God is to me,” he said;
“Though health and wealth are gone, it’s true;
Things might be worse, I might be dead,
And here I’m living, laughing too.
Serene beneath the evening sky
I wait, and every man’s my friend;
God’s most contented man am I...
He keeps me smiling to the End.”
To-day the basin of the Luxembourg is bright with little boats. Hundreds of happy children romp around it. Little ones everywhere; yet there is no other city with so many childless homes. ”

“ There's a cry from out the loneliness—oh, listen, Honey, listen!
⁠Do you hear it, do you fear it, you're a-holding of me so?
You're a-sobbing in your sleep, dear, and your lashes, how they glisten—
⁠Do you hear the Little Voices all a-begging me to go?
All a-begging me to leave you. Day and night they're pleading, praying,
⁠On the North-wind, on the West-wind, from the peak and from the plain ”

“ Yes; if I were a millionaire I should write, if it were only to escape from my ideas.”
“You have given two reasons why men write,” said MacBean: “for gain, for self-expression. Then, again, some men write to amuse themselves, some because they conceive they have a mission in the world; some because they have real genius, and are conscious they can enrich the literature of all time. I must say I don’t know of any belonging to the latter class. We are living in an age of mediocrity. There is no writer of to-day who will be read twenty years after he is dead. ”

“ And she wondered why my lips were chill,
⁠Why I was silent and kissed her so.
⁠A year has gone and the moon is bright,
⁠A gibbous moon, like a ghost of woe;
⁠I sit by a new-made grave to-night,
⁠And my heart is broken—it's strange, you kuow. ”

“ That Barret, the painter of pictures, what feeling for color he had!
And Fanning, the maker of music, such melodies mirthful and mad!
And Harley, the writer of stories, so whimsical, tender and glad!
To hark to their talk In the trenches, high heart unfolding to heart,
Of the day when the war would be over, and each would be true to his part,
Upbuilding a Palace of Beauty to the wonder and glory of Art...
Yon’s Barret, the painter of pictures, yon carcass that rots on the wire;
His hand with its sensitive cunning Is crisped to a cinder with fire ”

“ He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.
There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: "You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains."
Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code. ”

“ MacBean listening with his keen, sarcastic smile, Saxon Dane banging his great hairy fist on the table till the glasses jump. Where are they now? Living a life that I will never know. When they come back, if they ever do, shall I not feel shamed in their presence? Oh, this filthy war! Things were going on so beautifully. We were all so happy, so full of ambition, of hope; laughing and talking over pipe and bowl, and in our garrets seeking to realize our dreams. Ah, these days will never come again!
Then, as I sit there, Calvert seeks me out. ”

“ Of cities leaping to stature, of fame like a flag unfurled,
As I pour the tide of my riches in the eager lap of the world."
This is the Law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive;
That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive. ”

“ After all, Silence is only man’s confession of his deafness. Like Death, like Eternity, it is a word that means nothing. So lying there I hear the breathing of the trees, the crepitation of the growing grass, the seething of the sap and the movements of innumerable insects. Strange how I think with distaste of the spurious glitter of Paris, of my garret, even of my poor little book.
I watch the wife of my friend gathering poppies in the wheat. ”

“ Sagas of men of earth
⁠Humanly suffering,
⁠Such as you all have done;
⁠Savagely faring forth,
⁠Sons of the midnight sun,
⁠Argonauts of the North.
Far in the land God forgot
⁠Glimmers the lure of your trail;
Still in your lust are you taught
⁠Even to win is to fail. ”

“ And beyond the crosses many fresh graves have been dug. With hungry open mouths they wait. Even now I can hear the guns that are going to feed them. Soon there will be more crosses, and more and more. Then they will cease, and wives and mothers will come here to weep.
Ah! Peace so precious must be bought with blood and tears. Let us honor and bless the men who pay, and envy them the manner of their dying; for not all the jeweled orders on the breasts of the living can vie in glory with the little wooden cross the humblest of these has won.... ”

“ 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 ”

“ As long as I have a crust I am master of my destiny. Some day, when I am rich and famous, I shall look back on all this with regret. Yet I think I shall always remain a Bohemian. I hate regularity. The clock was never made for me. I want to eat when I am hungry, sleep when I am weary, drink–well, any old time.
I prefer to be alone. Company is a constraint on my spirit. I never make an engagement if I can avoid it. ”

“ I've sweated athirst in its summer heat, I've frozen and starved in its cold;
I've followed my dreams by its thousand streams, I've toiled and moiled for its gold.
"Look at my eyes—been snow-blind twice; look where my foot's half gone;
And that gruesome scar on my left cheek, where the frost-fiend bit to the bone.
Each one a brand of this devil's land, where I've played and I've lost the game,
A broken wreck with a craze for 'hooch,' and never a cent to my name.
"This mining is only a gamble; the worst is as good as the best ”

“ We play the part... but say, old chap, oh, isn’t it a bore?
We work like slaves, we eat too much, we put on evening dress;
We’ve everything a man can want, I think... but happiness.
Come, let us sneak away, old chum; forget that we are rich,
And earn an honest appetite, and scratch an honest itch.
Let’s be two jolly garreteers, up seven flights of stairs,
And wear old clothes and just pretend we aren’t millionaires;
And wonder how we’ll pay the rent, and scribble ream on ream,
And sup on sausages and tea, and laugh and loaf and dream. ”

“ Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;
⁠Let us journey to a lonely land I know.
There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam to guide us,
⁠And the Wild is calling, calling . . . let us go. ”

“ And when I offered him a smoke he groaned and shook his head:
“I’m all upset; it’s Angeline... she’s covered with a rash...
She’ll maybe die, my little gosse,” cried Julot the apache.
But Angeline, I joy to say, came through the test all right,
Though Julot, so they tell me, watched beside her day and night.
And when I saw him next, says he: “Come up and dine with me.
We’ll buy a beefsteak on the way, a bottle and some brie.”
And so I had a merry night within his humble home,
And laughed with Angeline the gosse and Gigolette the môme. ”

“ The North-wind swoops from the brooding Pole, and our ancients crash and roar;
But where one falls from the crumbling walls shoots up a hardy score.
We spring from the gloom of the canyon's womb; in the valley's lap we lie ”

“ There is a majesty in the detachment of its lazy waves, and it is good in the night to hear its friendly roar. Good, too, to leap forth with the first sunshine and fall into its arms, to let it pummel the body to living ecstasy and send one to breakfast glad-eyed and glowing.
Behind the house the greensward slopes to a wheat-field that is like a wall of gold. Here I lie and laze away the time, or dip into a favorite book, Stevenson’s Letters or Belloc’s Path to Rome. Bees drone in the wild thyme; a cuckoo keeps calling, a lark spills jeweled melody. ”

“ Your sweethearts, sons, ye scornful ones—'tis I who know their shame.
The gods, ye see, are brutes to me—and so I play my game.
For life is not the thing we thought, and not the thing we plan;
And Woman in a bitter world must do the best she can—
Must yield the stroke, and bear the yoke, and serve the will of man ”

“ To-day their hearts go out to us, the tears are in their eyes!
But wait a bit; to-morrow they will blindly look aside;
No more they’ll talk of what they owe, the dues of sacrifice
(One hates to be reminded of an everlasting debt) .
It’s all in human nature. Ah! the world will soon forget.
My mind goes back to where I lay wound-rotted on the plain,
And ate the muddy mangold roots, and drank the drops of dew,
And dragged myself for miles and miles when every move was pain,
And over me the carrion-crows were retching as they flew. ”

“ Like soldiers they stand in rank, extending over the moor. The sky is cowled with cloud, save where a sullen sunset shoots blood-red rays across the plain. Bathed in that sinister light stands my army of stone, and a wind swooping down seems to wail amid its ranks. As in a glass darkly I can see the skin-clad men, the women with the tangled hair, the beast-like feast, the cowering terror of the night. ”

“ Where the trenches are, rockets are rising, green and red. I hear the coughing of the Maxims, the peevish nagging of the rifles, the boom of a “heavy” and the hollow sound of its exploding shell.
Running the car into the shadow of a ruined house, I try to sleep. But a battery starts to blaze away close by, and the flame lights up my shelter. Near me some soldiers are in deep slumber; one stirs in his sleep as a big rat runs over him, and I know by experience that when one is sleeping a rat feels as heavy as a sheep. ”

“ Write to please yourself, as if not a single reader existed. The moment a man begins to be conscious of an audience he is artistically damned. You’re not a Poet, I hope?”
I meekly assured him I was a mere maker of verse.
“Well,” said he, “better good verse than middling poetry. And maybe even the humblest of rhymes has its uses. Happiness is happiness, whether it be inspired by a Rossetti sonnet or a ballad by G. R. Sims. Let each one who has something to say, say it in the best way he can, and abide the result.... After all,” he went on, “what does it matter? We are living in a pygmy day. ”

“ Oh, would you sit with pipe and bowl, and dream upon some sunny quay,
Or would you walk the windy heath and drink the cooler air;
Oh, would you seek a cradled cove and tussle with the topaz sea!–
Pack up your kit to-morrow, lad, and haste to Finistère.
Oh, I will go to Finistère, there’s nothing that can hold me back.
I’ll laugh with Yves and Léon, and I’ll chaff with Rose and Jeanne;
I’ll seek the little, quaint buvette that’s kept by Mother Merdrinac,
Who wears a cap of many frills, and swears just like a man. ”

“ There are difficulties to overcome; thoughts that will not fit their mold; rebellious rhymes. Ah! those moments of despair and defeat.
Then suddenly the mind grows lucid, imagination glows, the snarl unravels. In the end is always triumph and success. O delectable métier! Who would not be a rhyme-smith in Paris, in Bohemia, in the heart of youth!
I have now finished my twentieth ballad. Five more and they will be done. In quiet corners of cafes, on benches of the Luxembourg, on the sunny Quays I read them over one by one. ”

“ Can you wonder my mother-heart’s a-brim?
Oh, how happy we’re going to be!
Aren’t we, Jim?
II
In Picardy,
January 1915. The road lies amid a malevolent heath. It seems to lead us right into the clutch of the enemy; for the star-shells, that at first were bursting overhead, gradually encircle us. The fields are strangely sinister; the splintered trees are like giant toothpicks. There is a lisping and a twanging overhead.
As we wait at the door of the dugout that serves as a first-aid dressing station, I gaze up into that mysterious dark, so alive with musical vibrations. ”

“ Each day has had its struggle, its failure, its triumph. However, that is all ended. During the past week we have lived breathlessly. For in spite of the exultant sunshine our spirits have been under a cloud, a deepening shadow of horror and calamity.... War.
Even as I write, in our little village steeple the bells are ringing madly, and in every little village steeple all over the land. As he hears it the harvester checks his scythe on the swing; the clerk throws down his pen; the shopkeeper puts up his shutters. Only in the cafés there is a clamor of voices and a drowning of care. ”

“ Oh Marie Toro, queen of queens, don’t you remember Paul?”
“Oh Marie, Marie Toro, in my garret next the sky,
Where many a day and night I’ve crouched with not a crust to eat,
A picture hangs upon the wall a fortune couldn’t buy,
A portrait of a girl whose face is pure and angel-sweet.”
Sadly the woman looked at him: “Alas! it’s true,” she said;
“That little maid, I knew her once. It’s long ago–she's dead.”
He went to her; he laid his hand upon her wasted arm:
“Oh, Marie Toro, come with me, though poor and sick am I.
For old times sake I cannot bear to see you come to harm ”

“ And Marie Toro’s name became an echo of the past.
You know that old and withered man, that derelict of art,
Who for a paltry franc will make a crayon sketch of you?
In slouching hat and shabby cloak he looks and is the part,
A sodden old Bohemian, without a single sou.
A boon companion of the days of Rimbaud and Verlaine,
He broods and broods, and chews the cud of bitter souvenirs ”

“ Send car at once.
The uptilted country-side is a checker-board of green and gray, and, except where groves of trees rise like islands, cultivated to the last acre. But as we near the firing-line all efforts to till the land cease, and the ungathered beets of last year have grown to seed. Amid rank unkempt fields I race over a road that is pitted with obus-holes; I pass a line of guns painted like snakes, and drawn by horses dyed khaki-color; then soldiers coming from the trenches, mud-caked and ineffably weary; then a race over a bit of road that is exposed ”

“ Calvert tries to paint more than the thing he sees; he tries to paint behind it, to express its spirit. He believes that Beauty is God made manifest, and that when we discover Him in Nature we discover Him in ourselves.
But Calvert did not always see thus. At one time he was a Pagan, content to paint the outward aspect of things. It was after his little child died he gained in vision. Maybe the thought that the dead are lost to us was too unbearable. ”

“ We’ll smoke our pipes and watch the pot, and feed the crackling fire,
And sing like two old jolly boys, and dance to heart’s desire;
We’ll climb the hill and ford the brook and camp upon the moor...
Old chap, let’s haste, I’m mad to taste the Joy of Being Poor.
V
My Garret, Montparnasse,⁠
June 1914.
MY NEIGHBORS
To rest my fagged brain now and then,
When wearied of my proper labors,
I lay aside my lagging pen
And get to thinking on my neighbors;
For, oh, around my garret den
There’s woe and poverty a-plenty,
And life’s so interesting when
A lad is only two-and-twenty. ”

“ Don’t pass before the terrace of the Café de la Paix.”
That portly man he looked at me with such a startled air,
Then bolted like a rabbit down the rue Michaudière.
“Ha! ha! I’ve saved a life,” I thought; and laughed in my relief,
And straightway joined the Spanish man o’er his apéritif.
And thus each day I dodged about and kept the strictest guard
For portly men with each a wen upon the Boulevard.
And then I hailed my Spanish pal, and sitting in the sun,
We ordered many Pernods and we drank them every one. ”