Robert W. Service

“ Earth so smiling 'way out yonder, Sun so bright it dazzles you; Birds a-singing, flowers a-flinging All their fragrance on the breeze; Dancing shadows, green, still meadows — Don't you mope, you've still got these. These, and none can take them from you; These, and none can weigh their worth. What! you're tired and broke and beaten? — Why, you're rich — you've got the earth! Yes, if you're a tramp in tatters, While the blue sky bends above You've got nearly all that matters — You've got God, and God is love. ”

“ The Lone Trail, the Lone Trail follow to the end. Tarry not, and fear not, chosen of the true; Lover of the Lone Trail, the Lone Trail waits for you.
The Pines We sleep in the sleep of ages, the bleak, barbarian pines; The gray moss drapes us like sages, and closer we lock our lines, And deeper we clutch through the gelid gloom where never a sunbeam shines. On the flanks of the storm-gored ridges are our black battalions massed; We surge in a host to the sullen coast, and we sing in the ocean blast; From empire of sea to empire of snow we grip our empire fast. ”

“ L'Envoi You who have lived in the land, You who have trusted the trail, You who are strong to withstand, You who are swift to assail: Songs have I sung to beguile, Vintage of desperate years, Hard as a harlot's smile, Bitter as unshed tears. Little of joy or mirth, Little of ease I sing; 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. ”

“ Time has got a little bill — get wise while yet you may, For the debit side's increasing in a most alarming way; The things you had no right to do, the things you should have done, They're all put down; it's up to you to pay for every one. So eat, drink and be merry, have a good time if you will, But God help you when the time comes, and you Foot the bill.
Quatrains One said: Thy life is thine to make or mar, To flicker feebly, or to soar, a star; It lies with thee — the choice is thine, is thine, To hit the ties or drive thy auto-car. ”

“ It's the olden lure, it's the golden lure, it's the lure of the timeless things, And to-night, oh, God of the trails untrod, how it whines in my heart-strings! I'm sick to death of your well-groomed gods, your make believe and your show; I long for a whiff of bacon and beans, a snug shakedown in the snow; A trail to break, and a life at stake, and another bout with the foe. With the raw-ribbed Wild that abhors all life, the Wild that would crush and rend, I have clinched and closed with the naked North, I have learned to defy and defend ”

“ And life will always seem a careless game; And they'd better far forget — Those who say they love us yet — Forget, blot out with bitterness our name.
New Year's Eve It's cruel cold on the water-front, silent and dark and drear; Only the black tide weltering, only the hissing snow; And I, alone, like a storm-tossed wreck, on this night of the glad New Year, Shuffling along in the icy wind, ghastly and gaunt and slow. They're playing a tune in McGuffy's saloon, and it's cheery and bright in there (God! but I'm weak — since the bitter dawn, and never a bite of food) ”

“ Grin If you're up against a bruiser and you're getting knocked about — Grin. If you're feeling pretty groggy, and you're licked beyond a doubt — Grin. Don't let him see you're funking, let him know with every clout, Though your face is battered to a pulp, your blooming heart is stout; Just stand upon your pins until the beggar knocks you out — And grin. This life's a bally battle, and the same advice holds true Of grin. If you're up against it badly, then it's only one on you, So grin. If the future's black as thunder, don't let people see you're blue ”

“ 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. And somehow you're sick of the highway, with its noise and its easy needs, And you seek the risk of the by-way, and you reck not where it leads. And sometimes it leads to the desert, and the tongue swells out of the mouth, And you stagger blind to the mirage, to die in the mocking drouth. And sometimes it leads to the mountain, to the light of the lone camp-fire, And you gnaw your belt in the anguish of hunger-goaded desire. ”

“ Oh, they shook us off and shipped us o'er the foam, To the larger lands that lure a man to roam; And we took the chance they gave Of a far and foreign grave, And we bade good-by for evermore to home. And some of us are climbing on the peak, And some of us are camping on the plain; By pine and palm you'll find us, with never claim to bind us, By track and trail you'll meet us once again. We are the fated serfs to freedom — sky and sea; We have failed where slummy cities overflow; But the stranger ways of earth know our pride and know our worth, And we go into the dark as fighters go. ”

“ 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.
The Three Voices The waves have a story to tell me, As I lie on the lonely beach; Chanting aloft in the pine-tops, The wind has a lesson to teach; But the stars sing an anthem of glory I cannot put into speech. The waves tell of ocean spaces, Of hearts that are wild and brave, Of populous city places, Of desolate shores they lave, Of men who sally in quest of gold To sink in an ocean grave. ”

“ The Men That Don't Fit In There's a race of men that don't fit in, A race that can't stay still; So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will. They range the field and they rove the flood, And they climb the mountain's crest; Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood, And they don't know how to rest. If they just went straight they might go far; They are strong and brave and true; But they're always tired of the things that are, And they want the strange and new. ”

“ Wind of the East, Wind of the West, wandering to and fro, Chant your songs in our topmost boughs, that the sons of men may know The peerless pine was the first to come, and the pine will be last to go! We pillar the halls of perfumed gloom; we plume where the eagles soar; 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 ”

“ You feel like an exile at first; You hate it like hell for a season, And then you are worse than the worst. It grips you like some kinds of sinning; It twists you from foe to a friend; It seems it's been since the beginning; It seems it will be to the end. I've stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow That's plumb-full of hush to the brim; I've watched the big, husky sun wallow In crimson and gold, and grow dim, Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming, And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop ”

“ When the giant herd is moving at the rising of the sun, And the prairie is lit with rose and gold, And the camp is all abustle, and the busy day's begun, He leaps into the saddle sure and bold. Through the round of heat and hurry, through the racket and the rout, He rattles at a pace that nothing mars; And when the night-winds whisper and camp-fires flicker out, He is sleeping like a child beneath the stars. ”

“ 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!
The Parson's Son 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: "I'm one of the Arctic brotherhood, I'm an old-time pioneer. ”

“ I've done their desire for a daily hire, and I die like a dog in a ditch. I have used the strength Thou hast given, Thou knowest I did not shirk; Threescore years of labor — Thine be the long day's work. And now, Big Master, I'm broken and bent and twisted and scarred, But I've held my job, and Thou knowest, and Thou will not judge me hard. Thou knowest my sins are many, and often I've played the fool — Whiskey and cards and women, they made me the devil's tool. ”

“ But the dew will gem the myrtle in the twilight ere he seek His little lonely cabin on the hill. Around the purple, vine-clad slope the argent river dreams; The roses almost hide the house from view; A snow-peak of the Winterberg in crimson splendor gleams; The shadow deepens down on the karroo. He seeks the lily-scented dusk beneath the orange tree; His pipe in silence glows and fades and glows; And then two little maids come out and climb upon his knee, And one is like the lily, one the rose. ”

“ The Cremation of Sam McGee There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee. Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows. Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows. He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell ”

“ The Younger Son 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 ”

“ A Life Tragedy A pistol shot rings round and round the world; In pitiful defeat a warrior lies. A last defiance to dark Death is hurled, A last wild challenge shocks the sunlit skies. Alone he falls, with wide, wan, woeful eyes: Eyes that could smile at death — could not face shame. ”

“ The lordly mountains soar in scorn As still as death, as stern as fate. The lonely sunsets flame and die; The giant valleys gulp the night; The monster mountains scrape the sky, Where eager stars are diamond-bright. So gaunt against the gibbous moon, Piercing the silence velvet-piled, A lone wolf howls his ancient rune — The fell arch-spirit of the Wild. ”

“ No one cares a cent about you, You don't care a cent for life; Hard luck has of hope bereft you, Health is failing, wish you'd die — Why, you've still the sunshine left you And the big, blue sky. Sky so blue it makes you wonder If it's heaven shining through ”

“ And now she sings. (O! singer in the gloom, Voicing a sorrow we can ne'er express, Here in the Farness where we few have room Unshamed to show our love and tenderness, Our hearts will echo, till they beat no more, That song of sadness and of motherland; And, stretched in deathless love to England's shore, Some day she'll hearken and she'll understand.) A prima-donna in the shining past, But now a mother growing old and gray, She thinks of how she held a people fast In thrall, and gleaned the triumphs of a day. She sees a sea of faces like a dream; She sees herself a queen of song once more ”

“ From love's close kiss to hell's abyss is one sheer flight, I trow, And wedding ring and bridal bell are will-o'-wisps of woe, And 'tis not wise to love too well, and this all women know. Wherefore, the wolf-pack having gorged upon the lamb, their prey, With siren smile and serpent guile I make the wolf-pack pay — With velvet paws and flensing claws, a tigress roused to slay. One who in youth sought truest truth and found a devil's lies; A symbol of the sin of man, a human sacrifice. Yet shall I blame on man the shame? ”

“ Ours till the world be riven in the crash of the utter end; Ours from the bleak beginning, through the aeons of death-like sleep; Ours from the shock when the naked rock was hurled from the hissing deep; Ours through the twilight ages of weary glacier creep. ”

“ Then sweetly she mocked his scruples, and softly she him beguiled: "You, who are verily man among men, speak with the tongue of a child. We have outlived the old standards; we have burst, like an over-tight thong, The ancient, outworn, Puritanic traditions of Right and Wrong." Then the Master feared for His angel, and called him again to His side, For oh, the woman was wondrous, and oh, the angel was tried! And deep in his hell sang the Devil, and this was the strain of his song: "The ancient, outworn, Puritanic traditions of Right and Wrong." ”

“ 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... ”

“ I paint my cheeks, for they are white, and cheeks of chalk men hate; Mine eyes with wine I make them shine, that man may seek and sate; With overhead a lamp of red I sit me down and wait Until they come, the nightly scum, with drunken eyes aflame; 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 ”