Poems by Robert W Service

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The Lure Of Little Voices

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;

Night and day they never leave me — do you know what they are saying?

"He was ours before you got him, and we want him once again."

Robert W Service

The Spell of the Yukon

I wanted the gold, and I sought it, I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.

Was it famine or scurvy — I fought it; I hurled my youth into a grave.

I wanted the gold, and I got it — Came out with a fortune last fall, —

Yet somehow life's not what I thought it, And somehow the gold isn't all.

No! There's the land. (Have you seen it?) It's the cussedest land that I know,

From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it To the deep, deathlike valleys below.

Some say God was tired when He made it; Some say it's a fine land to shun;

Maybe; but there's some as would trade it For no land on earth — and I'm one.

Robert W Service

A Cabbage Patch

Folk ask if I'm alive,

Most think I'm not;

Yet gaily I contrive

To till my plot.

The world its way can go,

I little heed,

So long as I can grow

The grub I need.

Robert W Service

The sunshine seeks my little room

To tell me Paris streets are gay;

That children cry the lily bloom

All up and down the leafy way;

That half the town is mad with May,

With flame of flag and boom of bell:

For Carnival is King to-day;

So pen and page, awhile farewell.

Robert W Service

Sunshine

Flat as a drum-head stretch the haggard snows;

The mighty skies are palisades of light;

The stars are blurred; the silence grows and grows;

Vaster and vaster vaults the icy night.

Here in my sleeping-bag I cower and pray:

"Silence and night, have pity! stoop and slay."

I have not slept for many, many days.

Robert W Service

Little Brother

Wars have been and wars will be

Till the human race is run;

Battles red by land and sea,

Never peace beneath the sun.

I am old and little care;

I'll be cold, my lips be dumb:

Brother mine, beware, beware . . .

Evil looms the wrath to come.

Robert W Service

My Mate

I've been sittin' starin', starin' at 'is muddy pair of boots,

And tryin' to convince meself it's 'im.

(Look out there, lad! That sniper — 'e's a dysey when 'e shoots;

'E'll be layin' of you out the same as Jim.)

Jim as lies there in the dug-out wiv 'is blanket round 'is 'ead,

To keep 'is brains from mixin' wiv the mud;

And 'is face as white as putty, and 'is overcoat all red,

Like 'e's spilt a bloomin' paint-pot — but it's blood.

Robert W Service

My Ancestors

A barefoot boy I went to school

To save a cobbler's fee,

For though the porridge pot was full

A frugal folk were we;

We baked our bannocks, spun our wool,

And counted each bawbee.

We reft our living from the soil,

And I was shieling bred;

Robert W Service

The Quitter

When you're lost in the Wild, and you're scared as a child,

And Death looks you bang in the eye,

And you're sore as a boil, it's according to Hoyle

To cock your revolver and . . . die.

But the Code of a Man says: "Fight all you can,"

And self-dissolution is barred.

In hunger and woe, oh, it's easy to blow . . .

It's the hell-served-for-breakfast that's hard.

Robert W Service

A Grain Of Sand

If starry space no limit knows

And sun succeeds to sun,

There is no reason to suppose

Our earth the only one.

'Mid countless constellations cast

A million worlds may be,

With each a God to bless or blast

And steer to destiny.

Robert W Service

The Shooting of Dan McGrew

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;

The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;

Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,

And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou.

When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and glare,

There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.

He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and scarcely the strength of a louse,

Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks for the house.

Robert W Service

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.

Robert W Service