In the moonless, misty night, with my little pipe alight,
I am sitting by the
camp-fire’s fading cheer;
Oh, the dew is falling chill on the dim, deer-haunted hill,
And the breakers in the bay
are moaning drear.
The toilful hours are sped, the boys are long abed,
And I alone a weary vigil
keep;
In the sightless, sullen sky I can hear the night-hawk cry,
And the frogs in frenzied
chorus from the creek.
And somehow the embers’ glow brings me back the long ago,
The days of merry laughter
and light song;
When I sped the hours away with the gayest of the gay
In the giddy whirl of
fashion’s festal throng.
Oh, I ran a grilling race and I little recked the pace,
For the lust of youth ran
riot in my blood;
But at last I made a stand in this God-forsaken land
Of the pine-tree and the
mountain and the flood.
And now I’ve got to stay, with an overdraft to pay,
For pleasure in the past with
future pain;
And I’m not the chap to whine, for if the chance were mine
I know I’d choose the old
life once again.
With its woman’s eyes a-shine, and its flood of golden wine;
Its fever and its frolic and
its fun;
The old life with its din, its laughter and its sin—
And chuck me in the gutter
when it’s done.
Ah, well! it’s past and gone, and the memory is wan,
That conjures up each old
familiar face;
And here by fortune hurled, I am dead to all the world,
And I’ve learned to lose my
pride and keep my place.
My ways are hard and rough, and my arms are strong and tough,
And I hew the dizzy pine till
darkness falls;
And sometimes I take a dive, just to keep my heart alive,
Among the gay saloons and dancing
halls.
In the distant, dinful town just a little drink to drown
The cares that crowd and
canker in my brain;
Just a little joy to still set my pulses all a-thrill,
Then back to brutish labour
once again.
And things will go on so until one day I shall know
That Death has got me cinched
beyond a doubt;
Then I’ll crawl away from sight, and morosely in the night
My weary, wasted life will
peter out.
Then the boys will gather round, and they’ll launch me in the ground,
And pile the stones the
timber wolf to foil;
And the moaning pine will wave overhead a nameless grave,
Where the black snake in the
sunshine loves to coil.
And they’ll leave me there alone, and perhaps with softened tone
Speak of me sometimes in the
camp-fire’s glow,
As a played-out, broken chum, who has gone to Kingdom Come,
And who went the pace in
England long ago.
--Robert William Service
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