Robert W. Service. Robert W. Service

bed, my broken chair — that’s nearly all.

      Only four faded walls, yet mine, all mine.

      Oh, you fine folks, a pauper scorns your pity.

      Look, where above me stars of rapture shine;

      See, where below me gleams the siren city …

      Am I not rich? — a millionaire no less,

      If wealth be told in terms of Happiness.

      From “Book Two: Early Summer”

      The Philistine and the Bohemian

      Last night MacBean introduced me to Saxon Dane the Poet. Truly, he is more like a blacksmith than a Bard — a big bearded man whose black eyes brood somberly or flash with sudden fire. We talked of Walt Whitman, and then of others.

      “The trouble with poetry,” he said, “is that it is too exalted. It has a phraseology of its own; it selects themes that are quite outside of ordinary experience. As a medium of expression it fails to reach the great mass of the people.”

      Then he added: “To hell with the great mass of the people! What have they got to do with it? Write to please yourself, as if not a single reader existed. The moment a man begins to be conscious of an audience he is artistically damned. You’re not a Poet, I hope?”

      I meekly assured him I was a mere maker of verse.

      “Well,” said he, “better good verse than middling poetry. And maybe even the humblest of rhymes has its uses. Happiness is happiness, whether it be inspired by a Rossetti sonnet or a ballad by G.R. Sims. Let each one who has something to say, say it in the best way he can, and abide the result.… After all,” he went on, “what does it matter? We are living in a pygmy day. With Tennyson and Browning the line of great poets passed away, perhaps forever. The world today is full of little minstrels, who echo one another and who pipe away tunefully enough. But with one exception they do not matter.”

      I dared to ask who was his one exception. He answered, “Myself, of course.”

      Here’s a bit of light verse which it amused me to write today, as I sat in the sun on the terrace of the Closerie de Lilas:

      She was a Philistine spick and span,

      He was a bold Bohemian.

      She had the mode, and the last at that;

      He had a cape and a brigand hat.

      She was so riante and chic and trim;

      He was so shaggy, unkempt and grim.

      On the rue de la Paix she was wont to shine;

      The rue de la Gaîté was more his line.

      She doted on Barclay and Dell and Caine;

      He quoted Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine.

      She was a triumph at Tango and teas;

      At Vorticist’s suppers he sought to please.

      She thought that Franz Lehar was utterly great;

      Of Strauss and Stravinski he’d piously prate.

      She loved elegance, he loved art;

      They were as wide as the poles apart:

      Yet — Cupid and Caprice are hand and glove —

      They met at a dinner, they fell in love.

      Home he went to his garret bare,

      Thrilling with rapture, hope, despair.

      Swift he gazed in his looking-glass,

      Made a grimace and murmured: “Ass!”

      Seized his scissors and fiercely sheared,

      Severed his buccaneering beard;

      Grabbed his hair, and clip! clip! clip!

      Off came a bunch with every snip.

      Ran to a tailor’s in startled state,

      Suits a dozen commanded straight;

      Coats and overcoats, pants in pairs,

      Everything that a dandy wears;

      Socks and collars, and shoes and ties,

      Everything that a dandy buys.

      Chums looked at him with wondering stare,

      Fancied they’d seen him before somewhere;

      A Brummel, a D’Orsay, a beau so fine,

      A shining, immaculate Philistine.

      Home she went in a raptured daze,

      Looked in the mirror with startled gaze,

      Didn’t seem to be pleased at all;

      Savagely muttered: “Insipid Doll!”

      Clutched her hair and a pair of shears,

      Cropped and bobbed it behind the ears;

      Aimed at a wan and willowy-necked

      Sort of a Holman Hunt effect;

      Robed in subtile and sage-green tones,

      Like the dames of Rossetti and E. Burne-Jones;

      Girdled her garments billowing wide,

      Moved with an undulating glide;

      All her frivolous friends forsook,

      Cultivated a soulful look;

      Gushed in a voice with a creamy throb

      Over some weirdly Futurist daub —

      Did all, in short, that a woman can

      To be a consummate Bohemian.

      A year went past with its hopes and fears,

      A year that seemed like a dozen years.

      They met once more.… Oh at last! At last!

      They rushed together, they stopped aghast.

      They looked at each other with blank dismay,

      They simply hadn’t a word to say.

      He thought with a shiver: “Can this be she?”

      She thought with a shudder: “This can’t be he?”

      This simpering dandy, so sleek and spruce;

      This languorous lily in garments loose;

      They sought to brace from the awful shock:

      Taking a seat, they tried to talk.

      She spoke of Bergson and Pater’s prose,

      He prattled of dances and ragtime shows;

      She purred of pictures, Matisse, Cezanne,

      His tastes to the girls of Kirchner ran;

      She raved of Tschaikowsky and Caesar Franck,

      He owned that he was a jazz band crank!

      They made no headway. Alas! alas!

      He thought her a bore, she thought him an ass.

      And so they arose and hurriedly fled;

      Perish Illusion, Romance, you’re dead.

      He loved elegance, she loved art,

      Better at once to part, to part.

      And what is the moral of this rot?

      Don’t try to be what you know you’re not.

      And if you’re made on a muttonish plan,

      Don’t seek to seem a Bohemian;

      And if to the goats your feet incline,

      Don’t