Spring Breaks in Foam-Sir Charles G. D. Roberts (1860-1943)

Spring breaks in foam

Along the blackthorn bough.

Whitethroat and goldenwing

Are mating now.

With green buds in the copse

And gold bloom in the sun

Earth is one ecstasy

Of life begun.

And in my heart

Spring breaks in glad surprise

As the long frosts of the long years melt

At your dear eyes.

Burnt Lands-Sir Charles G. D. Roberts (1860-1943)

On other fields and other scenes the morn

Laughs from her blue,--but not such fields are these,

Where comes no cheer of summer leaves and bees,

And no shade mitigates the day's white scorn.

These serious acres vast groves adorn;

Bur giant trunks, bleak shapes that once were trees,

Tower naked, unassuaged of rain or breeze,

Their stern grey isolation grimly borne.

The months roll over them, and mark no change

But when spring stirs, or autumn stills, the year,

Perchance some phantom leafage rustles faint

Through their parched dreams,--some old-time notes

ring strange,

When in his slender treble, far and clear,

Reiterates the rain-bird his complaint.

The Squatter-Sir Charles G. D. Roberts (1860-1943)

Round the lone clearing

Clearly the whitethroats call

Across the marge of dusk and dewfall's coolness.

Far up in the empty

Amber and apple-green sky

A night-hawk swoops, and twangs her silver chord.

No winds astir,

But the poplar boughs breathe softly

And the smoke of a dying brush-fire stings the air.

The spired, dark spruces

Crowd up to the snake fence, breathless,

Expectant till the rising of the moon.

In the wet alders,

Where the cold brook flows murmuring,

The red cow drinks--the cow-bell sounds tonk tonk.

*********           ********          ********   ******

From his cabin door

The squatter lounges forth,

Sniffs the damp air, and scans the sky for rain.

He has made his meal,--

Fat bacon, and buckwheat cakes,

And ruddy-brown molasses from Barbados.

His chores all done,

He seats himself on the door-sill,

And slowly fills his pipe, and smokes, and dreams.

He sees his axe

Leaning against the birch logs.

The fresh white chips are scattered over the yard.

He hears his old horse

nosing the hay, in the log barn

Roofed with poles and sheathed with sheets of birch-

     bark.

Beyond the barn

He sees his buckwheat patch.

Its pink-white bloom pale-gleaming through

     twilight.

Its honeyed fragrance

Breathes to his nostrils, mingled

With the tang of the brush-fire smoke, thinly ascending.

Deepens the dusk.

The whitethroats are hushed; and the night-hawk

Drops down from the sky and hunts the low-flying

     night-moths.

*****  *****  *****  *****  *****  *****  *****

The squatter is dreaming.

Vaguely he plans how, come winter,

He'll chop out another field, just over the brook.

He'll build a new barn

Next year, a barn with a haymow,

No more to leave his good hay outside in a stack.

He rises and stretches

Goes in and closes the door,

And lights his lamp on the table beside the window.

The light shines forth.

It lights up the wide-strewn chips.

For a moment it catches the dog darting after a rabbit.

I lights up the lean face

Of the squatter as he sits reading,

Knitting his brow as he spells out a month-old paper.

*****  *****  *****  *****  *****  *****  *****

Slowly the moon,

Humped, crooked, red, remote

Rises, tangled and scrawled behind the spruce tops.

Higher she rises,--

Grows rounder, and smaller and white,

And sails up the empty sky high over the spruce-tops.

She washes in silver

illusively clear, the log barn,

The lop-sided stack by the barn, and the slumbering 

     cabin.

She floods in the window,--

And the squatter stirs in his bunk,

On his mattress stuffed with green fir-tips, balsamy

     scented.

*****  *****  *****  *****  *****  *****  *****

From the dark of the forest

The horned owl hoots, and is still.

Startled, the silence descends, and broods once more

     on the clearing.

The Clearing-Sir Charles G. D. Roberts (1860-1943)

Stumps and harsh rocks, and prostrate trunks all

charred

And gnarled roots naked to the sun and rain,--

They seem in their grim stillness to complain,

And by their plaint the evenings peace is jarred.

These ragged acres fire and the axe have scarred,

And many summers not assuaged their pain.

In vain the pink and saffron light, in vain

The pale dew on the hillocks stripped and marred!

But here and there the waste is touched with cheer

Where spreads the fire-weed like a crimson flood

And venturous plumes of goldenrod appear;

And round the blackened fence the great boughs lean

With comfort; and across the solitude

The hermits holy transport peals serene

Thou Art Not Fair-Thomas Campion (1575?-1620?)

Thou art not fair for all thy red and white,

For all those rosy ornaments in thee,--

Thou art not sweet, though made of mere delight,

Nor fair, nor sweet, unless thou pity me.

I will not soothe thy fancies; thou shalt prove

that beauty is no beauty without love.

Yet love not me, nor seek thou to allure

My thoughts with beauty, were it more divine;

Thy smiles and kisses I cannot endure,

I'll not be wrapp'd up in those arms of thine:

Now show it, if thou be a woman right--

Embrace and kiss and love me in despite.

Poem and Song, There is a Garden-Thomas Camppion (1575?-1620?)

There is a garden in her face,

Where roses and white lilies grow;

A heavenly paradise is that place,

Wherein all pleasant fruits do flow.

There cherries grow, which none may buy

Till Cherry-ripe themselves do cry.

Those cherries fairly'do enclose

Of orient pearl a double row;

Which when her lovely laughter shows,

They look like rose buds fill'd with snow.

Yet them nor peer nor prince can buy,

Till Cherry-ripe themselves do cry.

Her eyes like angels watch them still;

Her brows like bended brows do stand,

Treat'ning with piercing frowns to kill

All that attempt with eye or hand

Those sacred cherries to come nigh,

 Till  Cherry-ripe  themselves do cry.

Sleep, Angry Beauty-Thomas Campion (1575?-1620)

Sleep angry beauty, sleep and fear not me.

For who a sleeping lion dares provoke?

 It shall suffice me here to sit and see

 Those lips shut up that never kindly spoke.

What sight can more content a lover's mind

Than beauty seeming harmless, if not kind?

My words have charm'd  her, for secure she sleeps,

Though guilty much of wrong done to my love;

And in her slumber, see, she, close-ey'd, weeps:

Dreams often more than waking passions move.

Plead, sleep, my cause, and make her soft like thee: 

That she in peace may wake and pity me.

The Little Dancers-Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)

Lonely, save for a few faint stars, the sky
Dreams; and lonely, below the little street
Into its gloom retires, secluded and shy.
Scarcely the dumb roar enters this soft retreat;
And all is dark, save where come flooding rays
From a tavern window; there, to the brisk measure
Of an organ that down in an alley merily plays,
Two children, all alone and no one by,
Holding their tattered frocks, through an airy maze
Of motion, lightly threaded with nimble feet,
Dance sedately: face to face they gaze,
Their eyes shining, grave with a perfect pleasure.

Dirge-Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849)

If thou wilt ease thine heart

Of love and all its smart,

Then sleep, dear sleep;

And not sorrow

Hang any tear on your eyelashes; 

Lie still and deep,

Sad soul, until the sea-wave washes

The rim o' the sun to-morrow,In eastern sky.

But wilt thou cure thine heart

Of lave and all its smart,

Then die dear die

"Tis deeper, sweeter,

Than on a rose bank to lie dreaming

With folded eye;

And then alone, amid the beaming

Of love's stars, thou'lt meet her

In eastern sky.

Song-Thomas Lovell Bedoes (1803-1849)

How many times do I love thee dear?

Tell me how many thoughts there be

In the atmosphere

Of a new-fall'n year,

Whose white and sable hours appear

The latest flake of Eternity:

So many times do I love thee dear.

How many times do I love again

Tell me how many beads there are

In a silver chain

Of evening rain,

Unravelled from the tumbling main,

And threading the eye of a yellow star:

So many times do I love again.

Dream-Pedlary-Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849)

If there were dreams to sell,

 What would you buy?

Some cost a passing bell;

Some a light sigh,

That shakes from Life's fresh crown

Only a rose-leaf down.

I there were dreams to sell,

Merry and sad to tell,

And the crier rang the bell,

What would you buy?

A cottage lone and still,

With bowers nigh,

Shadowy, my woes to still,

Until I die.

Such pearl from Life's fresh crown

Fain would I shake me down,

Were dreams to have at will,

This would best heal my ill,

This would I buy.

But there were dreams to sell,

Ill didst thou buy;

Life is a dream, they tell,

Waking, to die

Dreaming a dream to prize

Is wishing ghosts to rise;

And, if I had the spell

To call the buried well, 

Which one would I?

If  there are ghosts to raise,What shall I call,

Out of hell's murky haze,

Heavens blue pall?

Raise my loved long-lost boy

To lead me to his joy.There are no ghosts to raise;

Out of death lead no ways; 

Vain is the call.

Know'st thou not ghosts to sue?

No love thou hast.

Else lie, as I will do

And breath thy last.

So out of Life's fresh crown

Fall like a rose-leaf down

Thus are the ghosts to woo;

Thus all dreams made true

Ever to last!

A Voice From the Waters-Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849)

The swallow leaves her nest,

The soul my weary breast;

But therefore let the rain

On my grave

Fall pure; for why complain?

Since both will come again

O'er the wave.

The wind dead leaves and snow

Doth scurry to and fro

And, once, a day shall break

O'er the wave,

When a storm of ghosts shall shake

The dead, until they wake

In the grave.

Song From the Ship-Thomas Lovell Beddoes(1803-1849

To sea, to sea! The calm is o'er;

The wanton water leaps in sport,

 And rattles down the pebbly shore;

The dolphin wheels, the sea-cows snort,

And unseen mermaids pearly song

Comes bubbling up, and weeds among.

Fling broad the sail, dip deep the oar:

To sea, to sea! the calm is o'er.

To sea! our wide-winged bark

Shall billowy cleave its sunny way,

And with its shadow, fleet and dark,

Break the caved Tritions' azure day,

Like mighty eagle soaring light

O'er antelopes on Alpine height.

The anchor heaves, the ship swings free,

The sails swell full. To sea to sea!

How Do I Love Thee?-Browning, Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861)

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level lf every day's

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

I love the freely, as men strive for Right

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhoods faith.

 I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints--I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

Don’t Quit Poem

The Don't Quit poem was written many years ago. The author is unknown.

Sadly, in recent years a number of people have claimed ownership of the poem;

and some, have even claimed to have written it themselves!

Here is the original poem in its entirety:

Don’t Quit

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,

When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,

When the funds are low and the debts are high,

And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,

When care is pressing you down a bit,

Rest, if you must, but don't you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,

As every one of us sometimes learns,

And many a failure turns about,

When he might have won had he stuck it out;

Don't give up though the pace seems slow--

You may succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than,

It seems to a faint and faltering man,

Often the struggler has given up,

When he might have captured the victor's cup,

And he learned too late when the night slipped down,

How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out--

The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,

And you never can tell how close you are,

It may be near when it seems so far,

So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit--

It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.

- Author unknown

Two Pieces of Verse, by Robert W. Service (1874-1958), the Ayrshire Poet, Never Officially Published

THE WORKS OF ROBERT W. SERVICE ARE PUBLIC DOMAIN.
Any claim as to copy rights, LINKING TO MY OR OTHER WEBSITES, claims of ownership, usage control, or other, of his OR ANY OTHER SUCH PUBLIC MATERIAL; by Amazon, Bryant McGill,  Google, or Wikipedia amounts to  Pure, Blatant, Plagiarism and are highly ILLEGAL.

There is a small body of Robert W. Service's work, that has never been officially published  (any material that has been put on paper or produced in any substantial, permanent, form has been published; and, in Canada at least, is automatically subject to copyright law-date or official/commercial publication is NOT needed.) but in the briefest of ways, in biographies. Due I'm sure partly to Robert's "thrifty" nature, he would often, when invited to social occasions such as birthday parties, compose a poem for the guest of honour rather than purchase a more conventional gift. Unfortunately, because of their very nature, these poems have almost completely vanished. Yet, judging from the one reproduced here, they have the potential to tell a great deal about everyday life as it was seen by a Whitehorse bank clerk.

"Bob Smart's Dream" seems to have been written for a banquet held upon the resignation of J.P.Rogers, the Superintendent of the White Pass & Yukon Route. It was held on March 19, 1906, and the Whitehorse Star reported that all of Whitehorse's dignitaries were there; many of them feature in Service's poem:

Bob Smart had been the Government Assayer at Whitehorse since 1903;

J.P.Whitney owned one of the two largest general stores in town;

Bob Lowe was the member of the Territorial Council;

Bill Grainger owned a great deal of mining property in the southern Yukon;

Barney McGee had just gone into partnership with Pete Richen in the Commercial Hotel, where the banquet was held;

Bill Clark had been mining around Whitehorse since it was first settled; the Deacon was the nickname of lawyer Willard Phelps.

The sentiments spelled out in this piece seem to have been typical of the attitudes of the day, when mining at Whitehorse, Windy Arm and the Wheaton Valley was booming. Luckily, much of the progress envisioned never came to pass. There are no stamp mills, no smelter, no 18-storey buildings, no White Pass & Yukon "flyer" to Dawson (or even to Whitehorse any more). The "club" (the North Star Athletic Club) no longer exists, nor does Taylor & Drury's store. And Ear Lake is a gravel pit, not a park. But the steel bridge was built, and "the villas with gardens a flower" are in abundance. All in all, I think that Bob and the Deacon and Barney McGee would be pleased.

Bob Smart's Dream

This is my dream of Whitehorse

When fifty years have sped,

As after the Rogers' Banquet

I lay asleep in my bed.

I tottered along the sidewalk

That was made of real cement;

A skyscraper loomed above me,

Where once I remembered a tent.

I heard the roar of a trolley,

And I stumbled out of the way;

I dodged a few automobiles,

And I felt I was getting quite gay.

I thought I'd cross the Yukon,

Over the big steel bridge;

I heard the roar of the stamp mills

Up on the western ridge.

Crushing the quartz from bullion,

And borne on the evening breeze

I sniffed the fumes of the smelter

And the suphur made me sneeze.

So I thought I'd go to Ear Lake Park

Where nature was fresh and fair;

('Twas donated by J.P.Whitney,

The multi-millionaire.)

Out past the smiling suburbs,

The villas with gardens aflower,

The factories down by the rapids

Run by the water power.

I took a car to the Canyon

And transferred up to the Park

And I sat on a bench by the fountain

Feeling as old as the Ark.

I sighed for the ancient landmarks,

The men that I used to know,

Till I stumbled against a statue,

And spelled out the name - Bob Lowe.

A litle chap who saw me

Said with evident pride:

"That is a bust of my grandpa:

It's twenty years since he died.

And if you think I'm fooling,

Ask that boy and you'll see -

He's little Billy Grainger, my playmate,

And that's little Barney McGee."

Then I turned once more to the city,

With its streets like canyons aroar;

And the lights of Taylor & Drury's

Colossal department store:

The eighteen storey steel palace

Where once stood the White Pass Hotel,

The silent rush of its elevators

The clamor of bell upon bell.

And over there at the depot

The hurry, the crush and the din,

The flyer just starting for Dawson,

The bullion express coming in.

The business blocks all abustle,

The theatres all alight,

The Home of Indigent Sourdoughs

Endowed by Armstrong and White.

And everywhere were strangers,

And I thought in the midst of these

Of Old Bill Clark in his homespun,

And debonnaire Mr.Breze:

And Fish, and Doc and the Deacon,

And the solo bunch at the club -

Now grown to a stately mansion

That would make the old place look dub.

It was all so real, so lifelike,

I awoke like a man in a fog,

So I shed a few tears in the darkness,

And groped for the hair of the dog.

This was my dream of Whitehorse

When fifty years have sped,

As I lay asleep in my bed.

___ Robert  W. Service, 1905 ____________________

Robert William Service was born into a Scottish family while they were living in Preston, England. He was schooled in Scotland, attending Hillhead High School in Glasgow. Service moved to Canada at the age of 21 and travelled to Vancouver Island, British Columbia with his Buffalo Bill outfit and dreams of becoming a cowboy. He drifted around western North America, wandering from California to British Columbia, taking and quitting a series of jobs: Starving in Mexico, residing in a California bordello, farming on Vancouver Island and pursuing unrequited love in Vancouver. This sometimes required him to leech off his parent's Scottish neighbours and friends who had previously emigrated to Canada.

In 1899, Service was a store clerk in Cowichan Bay, British Columbia. He mentioned to a customer (Charles H. Gibbons, editor of the Victoria Daily Colonist) that he wrote verses, with the result that six poems by "R.S." on the Boer Wars had appeared in the Colonist by July 1900 – including "The March of the Dead" that would later appear in his first book. Service's brother, Alex (Alex was, especially by persons of Scottish decent pronounced Alec or Alick) was a prisoner of the Boers at the time, having been captured on November 15, 1899, alongside Winston Churchill.

The Colonist also published Service's "Music in the Bush" on September 18, 1901, and "The Little Old Log Cabin" on March 16, 1902.

Hired by the Canadian Bank of Commerce, he worked in a number of its branches before being posted to the branch in Whitehorse (not Dawson) in the Yukon Territory in 1904, six years after the Klondike Gold Rush. Inspired by the vast beauty of the Yukon wilderness, Service began writing poetry about the things he saw; conversations with locals led him to write about things he hadn't seen, many of which hadn't actually happened, as well. He did not set foot in Dawson City until 1908, arriving in the Klondike ten years after the Gold Rush, but his renown as a writer was already established.

He is said to have composed his first;, and shortest, verse, a grace, on his sixth birthday:

God bless the cakes and bless the jam;

Bless the cheese and the cold boiled ham:

Bless the scones Aunt Jeannie makes,

And save us all from bellyaches. Amen  ________