



Produced by A. Light





RHYMES OF A ROLLING STONE

by Robert W. Service

[British-born Canadian Poet -- 1874-1958.]

Author of "The Spell of the Yukon", "Ballads of a Cheechako", etc.


1912 edition, 1917 printing

[Some very minor changes have been made in spelling and punctuation
after consulting another edition.]


               I have no doubt at all the Devil grins,
                As seas of ink I spatter.
               Ye gods, forgive my "literary" sins --
                The other kind don't matter.



Contents



     Prelude
     A Rolling Stone
     The Soldier of Fortune
     The Gramaphone at Fond-Du-Lac
     The Land of Beyond
     Sunshine
     The Idealist
     Athabaska Dick
     Cheer
     The Return
     The Junior God
     The Nostomaniac
     Ambition
     To Sunnydale
     The Blind and the Dead
     The Atavist
     The Sceptic
     The Rover
     Barb-Wire Bill
     "?"
     Just Think!
     The Lunger
     The Mountain and the Lake
     The Headliner and the Breadliner
     Death in the Arctic
     Dreams Are Best
     The Quitter
     The Cow-Juice Cure
     While the Bannock Bakes
     The Lost Master
     Little Moccasins
     The Wanderlust
     The Trapper's Christmas Eve
     The World's All Right
     The Baldness of Chewed-Ear
     The Mother
     The Dreamer
     At Thirty-Five
     The Squaw Man
     Home and Love
     I'm Scared of it All
     A Song of Success
     The Song of the Camp-Fire
     Her Letter
     The Man Who Knew
     The Logger
     The Passing of the Year
     The Ghosts
     Good-Bye, Little Cabin
     Heart o' the North
     The Scribe's Prayer






RHYMES OF A ROLLING STONE




Prelude



          _I sing no idle songs of dalliance days,
          No dreams Elysian inspire my rhyming;
          I have no Celia to enchant my lays,
          No pipes of Pan have set my heart to chiming.
          I am no wordsmith dripping gems divine
          Into the golden chalice of a sonnet;
          If love songs witch you, close this book of mine,
              Waste no time on it._

          _Yet bring I to my work an eager joy,
          A lusty love of life and all things human;
          Still in me leaps the wonder of the boy,
          A pride in man, a deathless faith in woman.
          Still red blood calls, still rings the valiant fray;
          Adventure beacons through the summer gloaming:
          Oh long and long and long will be the day
              Ere I come homing!_

          _This earth is ours to love:  lute, brush and pen,
          They are but tongues to tell of life sincerely;
          The thaumaturgic Day, the might of men,
          O God of Scribes, grant us to grave them clearly!
          Grant heart that homes in heart, then all is well.
          Honey is honey-sweet, howe'er the hiving.
          Each to his work, his wage at evening bell
              The strength of striving._




A Rolling Stone



          _There's sunshine in the heart of me,
          My blood sings in the breeze;
          The mountains are a part of me,
          I'm fellow to the trees.
          My golden youth I'm squandering,
          Sun-libertine am I;
          A-wandering, a-wandering,
          Until the day I die._

     I was once, I declare, a Stone-Age man,
      And I roomed in the cool of a cave;
     I have known, I will swear, in a new life-span,
      The fret and the sweat of a slave:
     For far over all that folks hold worth,
      There lives and there leaps in me
     A love of the lowly things of earth,
      And a passion to be free.

     To pitch my tent with no prosy plan,
      To range and to change at will;
     To mock at the mastership of man,
      To seek Adventure's thrill.
     Carefree to be, as a bird that sings;
      To go my own sweet way;
     To reck not at all what may befall,
      But to live and to love each day.

     To make my body a temple pure
      Wherein I dwell serene;
     To care for the things that shall endure,
      The simple, sweet and clean.
     To oust out envy and hate and rage,
      To breathe with no alarm;
     For Nature shall be my anchorage,
      And none shall do me harm.

     To shun all lures that debauch the soul,
      The orgied rites of the rich;
     To eat my crust as a rover must
      With the rough-neck down in the ditch.
     To trudge by his side whate'er betide;
      To share his fire at night;
     To call him friend to the long trail-end,
      And to read his heart aright.

     To scorn all strife, and to view all life
      With the curious eyes of a child;
     From the plangent sea to the prairie,
      From the slum to the heart of the Wild.
     From the red-rimmed star to the speck of sand,
      From the vast to the greatly small;
     For I know that the whole for good is planned,
      And I want to see it all.

     To see it all, the wide world-way,
      From the fig-leaf belt to the Pole;
     With never a one to say me nay,
      And none to cramp my soul.
     In belly-pinch I will pay the price,
      But God! let me be free;
     For once I know in the long ago,
      They made a slave of me.

     In a flannel shirt from earth's clean dirt,
      Here, pal, is my calloused hand!
     Oh, I love each day as a rover may,
      Nor seek to understand.
     To _ENJOY_ is good enough for me;
      The gipsy of God am I;
     Then here's a hail to each flaring dawn!
     And here's a cheer to the night that's gone!
     And may I go a-roaming on
      Until the day I die!

          _Then every star shall sing to me
          Its song of liberty;
          And every morn shall bring to me
          Its mandate to be free.
          In every throbbing vein of me
          I'll feel the vast Earth-call;
          O body, heart and brain of me
          P