Robert William Service

In the little Crimson Manual it's written plain and clear
That who would wear the scarlet coat shall say good-bye to fear;
Shall be a guardian of the right, a sleuth-hound of the trail -
In the little Crimson Manual there's no such word as "fail" -
Shall follow on though heavens fall, or hell's top-turrets freeze,
Half round the world, if need there be, on bleeding hands and knees.
It's duty, duty, first and last, the Crimson Manual saith;
The Scarlet Rider makes reply: "It's duty - to the death."
And so they sweep the solitudes, free men from all the earth;
And so they sentinel the woods, the wilds that know their worth;
And so they scour the startled plains and mock at hurt and pain,
And read their Crimson Manual, and find their duty plain.
Knights of the lists of unrenown, bor...

When a girl's sixteen, and as poor as she's pretty,
And she hasn't a friend and she hasn't a home,
Heigh-ho! She's as safe in Paris city
As a lamb night-strayed where the wild wolves roam;
And that was I; oh, it's seven years now
(Some water's run down the Seine since then),
And I've almost forgotten the pangs and the tears now,
And I've almost taken the measure of men.

Oh, I found me a lover who loved me only,
Artist and poet, and almost a boy.
And my heart was bruised, and my life was lonely,
And him I adored with a wonderful joy.
If he'd come to me with his pockets empty,
How we'd have laughed in a garret gay!
But he was rich, and in radiant plenty
We lived in a villa at Viroflay.

Then came the War, and of bliss bereft me;
Then came the cal...

Say! You've struck a heap of trouble -
Bust in business, lost your wife;
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;
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 ...

    I

    I took the clock down from the shelf;
    "At eight," said I, "I shoot myself."
    It lacked a MINUTE of the hour,
    And as I waited all a-cower,
    A skinful of black, boding pain,
    Bits of my life came back again. . . .

    "Mother, there's nothing more to eat -
    Why don't you go out on the street?
    Always you sit and cry and cry;
    Here at my play I wonder why.
    Mother, when you dress up at night,
    Red are your cheeks, your eyes are bright;
    Twining a ribband in your hair,
    Kissing good-bye you go down-stair.
    Then I'm as lonely as can be.
    Oh, how I wish you were with me!
    Yet when you go out on the street,
    Mother, there's always lots to eat. . . ."


    I...

    I just think that dreams are best,
    Just to sit and fancy things;
    Give your gold no acid test,
    Try not how your silver rings;
    Fancy women pure and good,
    Fancy men upright and true:
    Fortressed in your solitude,
    Let Life be a dream to you.

    For I think that Thought is all;
    Truth's a minion of the mind;
    Love's ideal comes at call;
    As ye seek so shall ye find.
    But ye must not seek too far;
    Things are never what they seem:
    Let a star be just a star,
    And a woman - just a dream.

    O you Dreamers, proud and pure,
    You have gleaned the sweet of life!
    Golden truths that shall endure
    Over pain and doubt and strife.
    I would rather be a fool
    Living in my ...

So easy 'tis to make a rhyme,
That did the world but know it,
Your coachman might Parnassus climb,
Your butler be a poet.

Then, oh, how charming it would be
If, when in haste hysteric
You called the page, you learned that he
Was grappling with a lyric.

Or else what rapture it would yield,
When cook sent up the salad,
To find within its depths concealed
A touching little ballad.

Or if for tea and toast you yearned,
What joy to find upon it
The chambermaid had coyly laid
A palpitating sonnet.

Your baker could the fashion set;
Your butcher might respond well;
With every tart a triolet,
With every chop a rondel.

Your tailor's bill . . . well, I'll be blowed!
Dear chap! I never knowed him . . .
He's gone a...

Since all that is was ever bound to be;
Since grim, eternal laws our Being bind;
And both the riddle and the answer find,
And both the carnage and the calm decree;
Since plain within the Book of Destiny
Is written all the journey of mankind
Inexorably to the end; since blind
And mortal puppets playing parts are we:

Then let's have faith; good cometh out of ill;
The power that shaped the strife shall end the strife;
Then let's bow down before the Unknown Will;
Fight on, believing all is well with life;
Seeing within the worst of War's red rage
The gleam, the glory of the Golden Age.

Up into the sky I stare;
All the little stars I see;
And I know that God is there
O, how lonely He must be!

        Me, I laugh and leap all day,
        Till my head begins to nod;
        He's so great, He cannot play:
        I am glad I am not God.

                Poor kind God upon His throne,
                Up there in the sky so blue,
                Always, always all alone . . .
                "Please, dear God, I pity You."

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.

Alone, alone he paced his narrow room,
In the bright sunshine of that Paris day;
Saw in his thought the awful hand of doom;
Saw in his dream his glory pass away;
Tried in his heart, his weary heart, to pray:
"O God! who made me, give me strength to face
The spectre of this bitter, black disgrace."

*    *    *    *    *

The burn brawls darkly down the shaggy glen,
The bee-kissed heather blooms around the door;
He sees himself a barefoot boy again,
Bending o'er page of legenda...

Hurrah! I'm off to Finistère, to Finistère, to Finistère;
My satchel's swinging on my back, my staff is in my hand;
I've twenty louis in my purse, I know the sun and sea are there,
And so I'm starting out to-day to tramp the golden land.
I'll go alone and glorying, with on my lips a song of joy;
I'll leave behind the city with its canker and its care;
I'll swing along so sturdily - oh, won't I be the happy boy!
A-singing on the rocky roads, the roads of Finistère.

Oh, have you been to Finistère, and do you know a whin-gray town
That echoes to the clatter of a thousand wooden shoes?
And have you seen the fisher-girls go gallivantin' up and down,
And watched the tawny boats go out, and heard the roaring crews?
Oh, would you sit with pipe and bowl, and dream upon some s...

(The Wounded Canadian Speaks)



My leg? It's off at the knee.
Do I miss it? Well, some. You see
I've had it since I was born;
And lately a devilish corn.
(I rather chuckle with glee
To think how I've fooled that corn.)

But I'll hobble around all right.
It isn't that, it's my face.
Oh I know I'm a hideous sight,
Hardly a thing in place;
Sort of gargoyle, you'd say.
Nurse won't give me a glass,
But I see the folks as they pass
Shudder and turn away;
Turn away in distress . . .
Mirror enough, I guess.

I'm gay! You bet I am gay;
But I wasn't a while ago.
If you'd seen me even to-day,
The darndest picture of woe,
With this Caliban mug of mine,
So ravaged and raw and red,
Turned to the wall - in f...

    I've tinkered at my bits of rhymes
    In weary, woeful, waiting times;
    In doleful hours of battle-din,
    Ere yet they brought the wounded in;
    Through vigils of the fateful night,
    In lousy barns by candle-light;
    In dug-outs, sagging and aflood,
    On stretchers stiff and bleared with blood;
    By ragged grove, by ruined road,
    By hearths accurst where Love abode;
    By broken altars, blackened shrines
    I've tinkered at my bits of rhymes.

    I've solaced me with scraps of song
    The desolated ways along:
    Through sickly fields all shrapnel-sown,
    And meadows reaped by death alone;
    By blazing cross and splintered spire,
    By headless Virgin in the mire;
    By gardens gashed amid their bloom,
   ...

When your marrer bone seems 'oller,
And you're glad you ain't no taller,
And you're all a-shakin' like you 'ad the chills;
When your skin creeps like a pullet's,
And you're duckin' all the bullets,
And you're green as gorgonzola round the gills;
When your legs seem made of jelly,
And you're squeamish in the belly,
And you want to turn about and do a bunk:
For Gawd's sake, kid, don't show it!
Don't let your mateys know it -
You're just sufferin' from funk, funk, funk.

Of course there's no denyin'
That it ain't so easy tryin'
To grin and grip your rifle by the butt,
When the 'ole world rips asunder,
And you sees yer pal go under,
As a bunch of shrapnel sprays 'im on the nut;
I admit it's 'ard contrivin'
When you 'ears the shells arrivin',

I dreamed I saw three demi-gods who in a cafe sat,
And one was small and crapulous, and one was large and fat;
And one was eaten up with vice and verminous at that.

The first he spoke of secret sins, and gems and perfumes rare;
And velvet cats and courtesans voluptuously fair:
"Who is the Sybarite?" I asked. They answered: "Baudelaire."

The second talked in tapestries, by fantasy beguiled;
As frail as bubbles, hard as gems, his pageantries he piled;
"This Lord of Language, who is he?" They whispered "Oscar Wilde."

The third was staring at his glass from out abysmal pain;
With tears his eyes were bitten in beneath his bulbous brain.
"Who is the sodden wretch?" I said. They told me: "Paul Verlaine."

Oh, Wilde, Verlaine and Baudelaire, their lips were wet wit...

I'm goin' 'ome to Blighty - ain't I glad to 'ave the chance!
I'm loaded up wiv fightin', and I've 'ad my fill o' France;
I'm feelin' so excited-like, I want to sing and dance,
For I'm goin' 'ome to Blighty in the mawnin'.

I'm goin' 'ome to Blighty: can you wonder as I'm gay?
I've got a wound I wouldn't sell for 'alf a year o' pay;
A harm that's mashed to jelly in the nicest sort o' way,
For it takes me 'ome to Blighty in the mawnin'.

'Ow everlastin' keen I was on gettin' to the front!
I'd ginger for a dozen, and I 'elped to bear the brunt;
But Cheese and Crust! I'm crazy, now I've done me little stunt,
To sniff the air of Blighty in the mawnin'.

I've looked upon the wine that's white, and on the wine that's red;
I've looked on cider flowin', till it fairly ...

Another day of toil and strife,
Another page so white,
Within that fateful Log of Life
That I and all must write;
Another page without a stain
To make of as I may,
That done, I shall not see again
Until the Judgment Day.

Ah, could I, could I backward turn
The pages of that Book,
How often would I blench and burn!
How often loathe to look!
What pages would be meanly scrolled;
What smeared as if with mud;
A few, maybe, might gleam like gold,
Some scarlet seem as blood.

O Record grave, God guide my hand
And make me worthy be,
Since what I write to-day shall stand
To all eternity;
Aye, teach me, Lord of Life, I pray,
As I salute the sun,
To bear myself that every day
May be a Golden One.

    O dear little cabin, I've loved you so long,
    And now I must bid you good-bye!
    I've filled you with laughter, I've thrilled you with song,
    And sometimes I've wished I could cry.
    Your walls they have witnessed a weariful fight,
    And rung to a won Waterloo:
    But oh, in my triumph I'm dreary to-night -
    Good-bye, little cabin, to you!

    Your roof is bewhiskered, your floor is a-slant,
    Your walls seem to sag and to swing;
    I'm trying to find just your faults, but I can't -
    You poor, tired, heart-broken old thing!
    I've seen when you've been the best friend that I had,
    Your light like a gem on the snow;
    You're sort of a part of me - Gee! but I'm sad;
    I hate, little cabin, to go.

    Below your crac...

And so when he reached my bed
The General made a stand:
"My brave young fellow," he said,
"I would shake your hand."

So I lifted my arm, the right,
With never a hand at all;
Only a stump, a sight
Fit to appal.

"Well, well. Now that's too bad!
That's sorrowful luck," he said;
"But there! You give me, my lad,
The left instead."

So from under the blanket's rim
I raised and showed him the other,
A snag as ugly and grim
As its ugly brother.

He looked at each jagged wrist;
He looked, but he did not speak;
And then he bent down and kissed
Me on either cheek.

You wonder now I don't mind
I hadn't a hand to offer. . . .
They tell me (you know I'm blind)
'TWAS GRAND-PEÈRE JOFFRE.