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The Best of Robert Service
by Robert Service

The Best of Robert Service

Amazon.com: Hardcover, Paperback
Barnes & Noble: Hardcover, Paperback

To the Man of the High North

My rhymes are rough, and often in my rhyming
    I’ve drifted, silver-sailed, on seas of dream,
Hearing afar the bells of Elfiand chiming,
    Seeing the groves of Arcadie agleam.

I was the thrall of Beauty that rejoices
    From peak snow-diademed to regal star;
Yet to mine aerie ever pierced the voices,
    The pregnant voices of the Things That Are.

The Here, the Now, the vast Forlorn around us;
    The gold-delirium, the ferine strife;
The lusts that lure us on, the hates that hound US;
    Our red rags in the patchwork quilt of Life.

The nameless men who nameless rivers travel,
    And in strange valleys greet strange deaths alone;
The grim, Intrepid ones who would unravel
    The mysteries that shroud the Polar Zone.

These will I sing, and if one of you linger
    Over my pages in the Long, Long Night,
And on some lone line lay a calloused finger,
    Saying: "It’s human-true - it hits me right;"
Then will I count this loving toil well spent;
    Then will I dream awhile - content, content.