“No man can be a failure ...Robert W. Service Jan. 16, 1874 - Sept. 11, 1958

“No man can be a failure if he thinks

he’s a success; if he thinks

he is a winner, then he is.”

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  ________

Abandoned Dog- Robert W. Service (1874-1958)

Abandoned Dog

They dumped it on the lonely road,       Then like a streak they sped; And as along the way I strode       I thought that it was dead: And then I saw that yelping pup       Rise, race to catch them up.     You know how silly wee dogs are.       It thought they were in fun. Trying to overtake their car       I saw it run and run: But as they faster, faster went,       It stumbled, sore and spent. I found it prone upon the way;       Of life was little token. As limply in the dust it lay       I thought its heart was broken: Then one dim eye it opened and       It sought to like my hand. Of course I took it gently up       And brought it to my wife Who loves all dogs, and now that pup       Shares in our happy life: Yet how I curse the bastards who       Its good luck never knew!

The Logger by Robert William Service (1874-1958)

The Logger

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

While the Bannock Bakes by Robert W Service (1874-1958)

"Land Of The Midnight Sun", "Rory Borealis Land" = Canada.

Monday, September 20, 2010 03:58 PM

 
Prince George, B.C.- Starting tonight, the world-wide web will have a new window on the Universe when the AuroraMAX online observatory begins streaming Canada's Northern Lights live over the Internet.

As indicated by the title of this poem, ORIGINALLY BAKED BY SCOTTISH PEASANTS, BANNOCK WAS, AND IS, a COMMUNAL LOAFof quick bread.  Although the main ingredient was usually barley flour; there no one correct recipe, except that bannock is always leavened, and bannock is always baked as a loaf, NEVER scones, or biscuits; nor is it EVER fry-bread.

While the Bannock Bakes

Light up your pipe again, old chum, and sit awhile with me;

I've got to watch the bannock bake -- how restful is the air!

You'd little think that we were somewhere north of Sixty-three,

Though where I don't exactly know, and don't precisely care.

The man-size mountains palisade us round on every side;

The river is a-flop with fish, and ripples silver-clear;

The midnight sunshine brims yon cleft -- we think it's the Divide;

We'll get there in a month, maybe, or maybe in a year.

It doesn't matter, does it, pal? We're of that breed of men

With whom the world of wine and cards and women disagree;

Your trouble was a roofless game of poker now and then,

And "raising up my elbow", that's what got away with me.

We're merely "Undesirables", artistic more or less;

My horny hands are Chopin-wise; you quote your Browning well;

And yet we're fooling round for gold in this damned wilderness:

The joke is, if we found it, we would both go straight to hell.

Well, maybe we won't find it -- and at least we've got the "life".

We're both as brown as berries, and could wrestle with a bear:

(That bannock's raising nicely, pal; just jab it with your knife.)

Fine specimens of manhood they would reckon us out there.

It's the tracking and the packing and the poling in the sun;

It's the sleeping in the open, it's the rugged, unfaked food;

It's the snow-shoe and the paddle, and the campfire and the gun,

And when I think of what I was, I know that it is good.

Just think of how we've poled all day up this strange little stream;

Since life began no eye of man has seen this place before;

How fearless all the wild things are! the banks with goose-grass gleam,

And there's a bronzy musk-rat sitting sniffing at his door.

A mother duck with brood of ten comes squattering along;

The tawny, white-winged ptarmigan are flying all about;

And in that swirly, golden pool, a restless, gleaming throng,

The trout are waiting till we condescend to take them out.

Ah, yes, it's good! I'll bet that there's no doctor like the Wild:

(Just turn that bannock over there; it's getting nicely brown.)

I might be in my grave by now, forgotten and reviled,

Or rotting like a sickly cur in some far, foreign town.

I might be that vile thing I was, -- it all seems like a dream;

I owed a man a grudge one time that only life could pay;

And yet it's half-forgotten now -- how petty these things seem!

(But that's "another story", pal; I'll tell it you some day.)

How strange two "irresponsibles" should chum away up here!

But round the Arctic Circle friends are few and far between.

We've shared the same camp-fire and tent for nigh on seven year,

And never had a word that wasn't cheering and serene.

We've halved the toil and split the spoil, and borne each other's packs;

By all the Wild's freemasonry we're brothers, tried and true;

We've swept on danger side by side, and fought it back to back,

And you would die for me, old pal, and I would die for you.

Now there was that time I got lost in Rory Bory Land,

(How quick the blizzards sweep on one across that Polar sea!)

You formed a rescue crew of One, and saw a frozen hand

That stuck out of a drift of snow -- and, partner, it was Me.

But I got even, did I not, that day the paddle broke?

White water on the Coppermine -- a rock -- a split canoe --

Two fellows struggling in the foam (one couldn't swim a stroke):

A half-drowned man I dragged ashore . . . and partner, it was You.

* * * * *

In Rory Borealis Land the winter's long and black.

The silence seems a solid thing, shot through with wolfish woe;

And rowelled by the eager stars the skies vault vastly back,

And man seems but a little mite on that weird-lit plateau.

No thing to do but smoke and yarn of wild and misspent lives,

Beside the camp-fire there we sat -- what tales you told to me

Of love and hate, and chance and fate, and temporary wives!

In Rory Borealis Land, beside the Arctic Sea.

One yarn you told me in those days I can remember still;

It seemed as if I visioned it, so sharp you sketched it in;

Bellona was the name, I think; a coast town in Brazil,

Where nobody did anything but serenade and sin.

I saw it all -- the jewelled sea, the golden scythe of sand,

The stately pillars of the palms, the feathery bamboo,

The red-roofed houses and the swart, sun-dominated land,

The people ever children, and the heavens ever blue.

You told me of that girl of yours, that blossom of old Spain,

All glamour, grace and witchery, all passion, verve and glow.

How maddening she must have been! You made me see her plain,

There by our little camp-fire, in the silence and the snow.

You loved her and she loved you. She'd a husband, too, I think,

A doctor chap, you told me, whom she treated like a dog,

A white man living on the beach, a hopeless slave to drink --

(Just turn that bannock over there, that's propped against the log.)

That story seemed to strike me, pal -- it happens every day:

You had to go away awhile, then somehow it befell

The doctor chap discovered, gave her up, and disappeared;

You came back, tired of her in time . . . there's nothing more to tell.

Hist! see those willows silvering where swamp and river meet!

Just reach me up my rifle quick; that's Mister Moose, I know --

There now, I've got him dead to rights . . . but hell! we've lots to eat

I don't believe in taking life -- we'll let the beggar go.

Heigh ho! I'm tired; the bannock's cooked; it's time we both turned in.

The morning mist is coral-kissed, the morning sky is gold.

The camp-fire's a confessional -- what funny yarns we spin!

It sort of made me think a bit, that story that you told.

The fig-leaf belt and Rory Bory are such odd extremes,

Yet after all how very small this old world seems to be . . .

Yes, that was quite a yarn, old pal, and yet to me it seems

You missed the point: the point is that the "doctor chap" . . . was ME. . . 

My Mate by Robert W Service (1874-1958)

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.

And I'm tryin' to remember of a time we wasn't pals.

'Ow often we've played 'ookey, 'im and me;

And sometimes it was music-'alls, and sometimes it was gals,

And even there we 'ad no disagree.

For when 'e copped Mariar Jones, the one I liked the best,

I shook 'is 'and and loaned 'im 'arf a quid;

I saw 'im through the parson's job, I 'elped 'im make 'is nest,

I even stood god-farther to the kid.

So when the war broke out, sez 'e:  "Well, wot abaht it, Joe?"

"Well, wot abaht it, lad?" sez I to 'im.

'Is missis made a awful fuss, but 'e was mad to go,

('E always was 'igh-sperrited was Jim).

Well, none of it's been 'eaven, and the most of it's been 'ell,

But we've shared our baccy, and we've 'alved our bread.

We'd all the luck at Wipers, and we shaved through Noove Chapelle,

And . . . that snipin' barstard gits 'im on the 'ead.

Now wot I wants to know is, why it wasn't me was took?

I've only got meself, 'e stands for three.

I'm plainer than a louse, while 'e was 'andsome as a dook;

'E always was a better man than me.

'E was goin' 'ome next Toosday; 'e was 'appy as a lark,

And 'e'd just received a letter from 'is kid;

And 'e struck a match to show me, as we stood there in the dark,

When . . . that bleedin' bullet got 'im on the lid.

'E was killed so awful sudden that 'e 'adn't time to die.

'E sorto jumped, and came down wiv a thud.

Them corpsy-lookin' star-shells kept a-streamin' in the sky,

And there 'e lay like nothin' in the mud.

And there 'e lay so quiet wiv no mansard to 'is 'ead,

And I'm sick, and blamed if I can understand:

The pots of 'alf and 'alf we've 'ad, and ZIP! like that—'e's dead,

Wiv the letter of 'is nipper in 'is 'and.

There's some as fights for freedom and there's some as fights for fun,

But me, my lad, I fights for bleedin' 'ate.

You can blame the war and blast it, but I 'opes it won't be done

Till I gets the bloomin' blood-price for me mate.

It'll take a bit o' bayonet to level up for Jim;

Then if I'm spared I think I'll 'ave a bid,

Wiv 'er that was Mariar Jones to take the place of 'im,

To sorter be a farther to 'is kid.

The Song of the Camp-fire-Robert Service (1874-1958)

The Song of the Camp-fire

Heed me, feed me, I am hungry, I am red-tongued with desire;

Boughs of balsam, slabs of cedar, gummy fagots of the pine,

Heap them on me, let me hug them to my eager heart of fire,

Roaring, soaring up to heaven as a symbol and a sign.

Bring me knots of sunny maple, silver birch and tamarack;

Leaping, sweeping, I will lap them with my ardent wings of flame;

I will kindle them to glory, I will beat the darkness back;

Streaming, gleaming, I will goad them to my glory and my fame.

Bring me gnarly limbs of live-oak, aid me in my frenzied fight;

Strips of iron-wood, scaly blue-gum, writhing redly in my hold;

With my lunge of lurid lances, with my whips that flail the night,

They will burgeon into beauty, they will foliate in gold.

Let me star the dim sierras, stab with light the inland seas;

Roaming wind and roaring darkness! seek no mercy at my hands;

I will mock the marly heavens, lamp the purple prairies,

I will flaunt my deathless banners down the far, unhouseled lands.

In the vast and vaulted pine-gloom where the pillared forests frown,

By the sullen, bestial rivers running where God only knows,

On the starlit coral beaches when the combers thunder down,

In the death-spell of the barrens, in the shudder of the snows;

In a blazing belt of triumph from the palm-leaf to the pine,

As a symbol of defiance lo! the wilderness I span;

And my beacons burn exultant as an everlasting sign

Of unending domination, of the mastery of Man;

I, the Life, the fierce Uplifter, I that weaned him from the mire;

I, the angel and the devil, I, the tyrant and the slave;

I, the Spirit of the Struggle; I, the mighty God of Fire;

I, the Maker and Destroyer; I, the Giver and the Grave.

Gather round me, boy and grey-beard, frontiersman of every kind.

Few are you, and far and lonely, yet an army forms behind:

By your camp-fires shall they know you, ashes scattered to the wind.

Peer into my heart of solace, break your bannock at my blaze;

Smoking, stretched in lazy shelter, build your castles as you gaze;

Or, it may be, deep in dreaming, think of dim, unhappy days.

Let my warmth and glow caress you, for your trails are grim and hard;

Let my arms of comfort press you, hunger-hewn and battle-scarred:

O my lovers! how I bless you with your lives so madly marred!

For you seek the silent spaces, and their secret lore you glean:

For you win the savage races, and the brutish Wild you wean;

And I gladden desert places, where camp-fire has never been.

From the Pole unto the Tropics is there trail ye have not dared?

And because you hold death lightly, so by death shall you be spared,

(As the sages of the ages in their pages have declared).

On the roaring Arkilinik in a leaky bark canoe;

Up the cloud of Mount McKinley, where the avalanche leaps through;

In the furnace of Death Valley, when the mirage glimmers blue.

Now a smudge of wiry willows on the weary Kuskoquim;

Now a flare of gummy pine-knots where Vancouver's scaur is grim;

Now a gleam of sunny ceiba, when the Cuban beaches dim.

Always, always God's Great Open: lo! I burn with keener light

In the corridors of silence, in the vestibules of night;

'Mid the ferns and grasses gleaming, was there ever gem so bright?

Not for weaklings, not for women, like my brother of the hearth;

Ring your songs of wrath around me, I was made for manful mirth,

In the lusty, gusty greatness, on the bald spots of the earth.

Men, my masters! men, my lovers! ye have fought and ye have bled;

Gather round my ruddy embers, softly glowing is my bed;

By my heart of solace dreaming, rest ye and be comforted!

I am dying, O my masters! by my fitful flame ye sleep;

     My purple plumes of glory droop forlorn.

Grey ashes choke and cloak me, and above the pines there creep

     The stealthy silver moccasins of morn.

There comes a countless army, it's the Legion of the Light;

     It tramps in gleaming triumph round the world;

And before its jewelled lances all the shadows of the night

     Back in to abysmal darknesses are hurled.

Leap to life again, my lovers! ye must toil and never tire;

     The day of daring, doing, brightens clear,

When the bed of spicy cedar and the jovial camp-fire

     Must only be a memory of cheer.

There is hope and golden promise in the vast portentous dawn;

     There is glamour in the glad, effluent sky:

Go and leave me; I will dream of you and love you when you're gone;

          I have served you, O my masters! let me die.

     A little heap of ashes, grey and sodden by the rain,

          Wind-scattered, blurred and blotted by the snow:

Let that be all to tell of me, and glorious again,

          Ye things of greening gladness, leap and glow!

A black scar in the sunshine by the palm-leaf or the pine,

          Blind to the night and dead to all desire;

Yet oh, of life and uplift what a symbol and a sign!

Yet oh, of power and conquest what a destiny is mine!

A little heap of ashes -- Yea! a miracle divine,

          The foot-print of a god, all-radiant Fire.