Robert Service

Robert William Service (16 January 1874 – 11 September 1958) was an English poet, educated in Scotland, who sailed to Canada in 1894.

Quotes
Just have one more try - it's dead easy to die,

It's the keeping-on-living that's hard.

*''ServiceWise & OtherWise (1942) ''

Oh it is good to ride and run,

To roam the reenwood

wild and free;

To hunt, to idle in the sun,

To leap into the laughing sea

*''ServiceWise & OtherWise (1942) ''

I count each day a little life,

With birth and death complete;

I cloister it from care and strife

And keep it sane and sweet.

*''ServiceWise & OtherWise (1942) ''

Marriage is a bachelor’s punishment for his sins

*''ServiceWise & OtherWise (1942) ''

The world is full of scribbling Nobodies

who think they’re scribbling Somebodies.

*''ServiceWise & OtherWise (1942) ''

Dignity is a tin god in the temple of bunk.

*''ServiceWise & OtherWise (1942) ''

After fifty don’t go to a funeral if you can avoid it.

It’s bad enough to go to your own when times comes.

*''ServiceWise & OtherWise (1942) ''

Wisdom is peace, peace wisdom.

Both are born of a humble heart and a nourished gratitude.

*''ServiceWise & OtherWise (1942) ''

Nature is the nest professor in the end.

*''ServiceWise & OtherWise (1942) ''

Some praise the Lord for Light,

The living spark;

I thank God for the Night

The healing dark.

*''ServiceWise & OtherWise (1942) ''


 * There's the wretched rent to pay, Yet I glower at pen and ink: Oh, inspire me, Muse, I pray, It is later than you think!
 * Ballads of a Bohemian (1921), It is later than you think


 * "It's coming soon and soon, mother, it's nearer every day, When only men who work and sweat will have a word to say; When all who earn their honest bread in every land and soil Will claim the Brotherhood of Man, the Comradeship of Toil; When we, the Workers, all demand: `What are we fighting for?' . . . Then, then we'll end that stupid crime, that devil's madness -- War."
 * Ballads of a Bohemian (1921), Michael


 * Mud is mankind in the moulding, Heaven's mystery unfolding
 * Mud

The Law of the Yukon (1907)

 * This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain: "Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane -- Strong for the red rage of battle; sane for I harry them sore; Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core


 * Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway; From my ruthless throne I have ruled alone for a million years and a day


 * 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 Shooting of Dan McGrew (1907)

 * A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon; The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a rag-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.


 * Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear, And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear; With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold, A helf-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold; While high overhead, green, yellow, and red, the North Lights swept in bars? — Then you've a hunch what the music meant . . . hunger and night and the stars.


 * But I want to state, and my words are straight, and I'll bet my poke they're true, That one of you is a hound of hell . . . and that one is Dan McGrew.

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 a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.


 * And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow. It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don’t know why; And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.