Poems by Robert W Service

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A Pot Of Tea

You make it in your mess-tin by the brazier's rosy gleam;

You watch it cloud, then settle amber clear;

You lift it with your bay'nit, and you sniff the fragrant steam;

The very breath of it is ripe with cheer.

You're awful cold and dirty, and a-cursin' of your lot;

You scoff the blushin' 'alf of it, so rich and rippin' 'ot;

It bucks you up like anythink, just seems to touch the spot:

God bless the man that first discovered Tea!

Robert W Service

The Trapper's Christmas Eve

It's mighty lonesome-like and drear.

Above the Wild the moon rides high,

And shows up sharp and needle-clear

The emptiness of earth and sky;

No happy homes with love a-glow;

No Santa Claus to make believe:

Just snow and snow, and then more snow;

It's Christmas Eve, it's Christmas Eve.

Robert W Service

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.

Robert W Service

A Song Of Suicide

Deeming that I were better dead,

"How shall I kill myself?" I said.

Thus mooning by the river Seine

I sought extinction without pain,

When on a bridge I saw a flash

Of lingerie and heard a splash . . .

So as I am a swimmer stout

I plunged and pulled the poor wretch out.

Robert W Service

A Rolling Stone

There's sunshine in the heart of me,

My blood sings in the breeze;

The mountains are a part of me,

I'm fellow to the trees.

My golden youth I'm squandering,

Sun-libertine am I;

A-wandering, a-wandering,

Until the day I die.

Robert W Service

A Casualty

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.

For the weary old doctor says to me:

"He'll only last for an hour or so.

Both of his legs below the knee

Robert W Service

Village Virtue

Jenny was my first sweetheart;

Poor lass! she was none too smart.

Though I swore she'd never rue it,

She would never let me do it.

When I tried she made a fuss,

So damn pure and virtuous.

Girls should cozen all they can,

Use their wiles to get their man.

Robert W Service

A Lyric Day

I deem that there are lyric days

So ripe with radiance and cheer,

So rich with gratitude and praise

That they enrapture all the year.

And if there is a God b\above,

(As they would tell me in the Kirk,)

How he must look with pride and love

Upon his perfect handiwork!

Robert W Service

Dance-Hall Girls

Where are the dames I used to know

In Dawson in the days of yore?

Alas, it's fifty years ago,

And most, I guess, have "gone before."

The swinging scythe is swift to mow

Alike the gallant and the fair;

And even I, with gouty toe,

Am glad to fill a rocking chair.

Robert W Service

A Mediocre Man

I'm just a mediocre man

Of no high-brow pretence;

A comfortable life I plan

With care and commonsense.

I do the things most people do,

I echo what they say;

And through my morning paper view

The problems of the day.

Robert W Service

A Rusty Nail

I ran a nail into my hand,

The wound was hard to heal;

So bitter was the pain to stand

I thought how it would feel,

To have spikes thrust through hands and feet,

Impaled by hammer beat.

Then hoisted on a cross of oak

Robert W Service

The Ballad Of The Ice-Worm Cocktail

To Dawson Town came Percy Brown from London on the Thames.

A pane of glass was in his eye, and stockings on his stems.

Upon the shoulder of his coat a leather pad he wore,

To rest his deadly rifle when it wasn't seeking gore;

The which it must have often been, for Major Percy Brown,

According to his story was a hunter of renown,

Who in the Murrumbidgee wilds had stalked the kangaroo

And killed the cassowary on the plains of Timbuctoo.

Robert W Service