Robert W. Service. Robert W. Service

bigger in the bigness of the whole?

      “Done things” just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story,

      Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul?

      Have you seen God in His splendors, heard the text that nature renders?

      (You’ll never hear it in the family pew.)

      The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things —

      Then listen to the Wild — it’s calling you.

      They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with their preaching,

      They have soaked you in convention through and through;

      They have put you in a showcase; you’re a credit to their teaching —

      But can’t you hear the Wild? — it’s calling you.

      Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;

      Let us journey to a lonely land I know.

      There’s a whisper on the night-wind, there’s a star agleam to guide us,

      And the Wild is calling, calling … let us go.

      The Heart of the Sourdough

      There where the mighty mountains bare their fangs unto the moon,

      There where the sullen sun-dogs glare in the snow-bright, bitter noon,

      And the glacier-glutted streams sweep down at the clarion call of June.

      There where the livid tundras keep their tryst with the tranquil snows;

      There where the silences are spawned, and the light of hellfire flows

      Into the bowl of the midnight sky, violet, amber and rose.

      There where the rapids churn and roar, and the ice floes bellowing run;

      Where the tortured, twisted rivers of blood rush to the setting sun —

      I’ve packed my kit and I’m going, boys, ere another day is done.

      I knew it would call, or soon or late, as it calls the whirring wings;

      It’s the olden lure, it’s the golden lure, it’s the lure of the timeless things,

      And tonight, oh, God of the trails untrod, how it whines in my heartstrings!

      I’m sick to death of your well-groomed gods, your make-believe and your show;

      I long for a whiff of bacon and beans, a snug shakedown in the snow;

      A trail to break, and a life at stake, and another bout with the foe.

      With the raw-ribbed Wild that abhors all life, the Wild that would crush and rend,

      I have clinched and closed with the naked North, I have learned to defy and defend;

      Shoulder to shoulder we have fought it out — yet the Wild must win in the end.

      I have flouted the Wild. I have followed its lure, fearless, familiar, alone;

      By all that the battle means and makes I claim that land for mine own;

      Yet the Wild must win, and a day will come when I shall be overthrown.

      Then when as wolf-dogs fight we’ve fought, the lean wolf-land and I;

      Fought and bled till the snows are red under the reeling sky;

      Even as lean wolf-dog goes down will I go down and die.

      The Pines

      We sleep in the sleep of ages, the bleak, barbarian pines;

      The grey moss drapes us like sages, and closer we lock our lines,

      And deeper we clutch through the gelid gloom where never a sunbeam shines.

      On the flanks of the storm-gored ridges are our black battalions massed;

      We surge in a host to the sullen coast, and we sing in the ocean blast;

      From empire of sea to empire of snow we grip our empire fast.

      To the niggard lands were we driven, ’twixt desert and floes are we penned;

      To us was the Northland given, ours to stronghold and defend;

      Ours till the world be riven in the crash of the utter end;

      Ours from the bleak beginning, through the aeons of death-like sleep;

      Ours from the shock when the naked rock was hurled from the hissing deep;

      Ours through the twilight ages of weary glacier creep.

      Wind of the East, Wind of the West, wandering to and fro,

      Chant your songs in our topmost boughs, that the sons of men may know

      The peerless pine was the first to come, and the pine will be the last to go!

      We pillar the halls of perfumed gloom; we plume where the eagles soar;

      The North-wind swoops from the brooding Pole, and our ancients crash and roar;

      But where one falls from the crumbling walls shoots up a hardy score.

      We spring from the gloom of the canyon’s womb; in the valley’s lap we lie;

      From the white foam-fringe, where the breakers cringe, to the peaks that tusk the sky,

      We climb, and we peer in the crag-locked mere that gleams like a golden eye.

      Gain to the verge of the hog-back ridge where the vision ranges free:

      Pines and pines and the shadow of pines as far as the eye can see;

      A steadfast legion of stalwart knights in dominant empery.

      Sun, moon and stars give answer; shall we not staunchly stand,

      Even as now, forever, wards of the wilder strand,

      Sentinels of the stillness, lords of the last, lone land?

      The Song of the Wage-Slave

      When the long, long day is over, and the Big Boss gives me my pay,

      I hope that it won’t be hellfire, as some of the parsons say.

      And I hope that it won’t be heaven, with some of the parsons I’ve met —

      All I want is just quiet, just to rest and forget.

      Look at my face, toil-furrowed; look at my calloused hands;

      Master, I’ve done Thy bidding, wrought in Thy many lands —

      Wrought for the little masters, big-bellied they be, and rich;

      I’ve done their desire for a daily hire, and I die like a dog in a ditch.

      I have used the strength Thou hast given, Thou knowest I did not shirk;

      Threescore years of labour — Thine be the long day’s work.

      And now, Big Master, I’m broken and bent and twisted and scarred,

      But I’ve held my job, and Thou knowest, and Thou will not judge me hard.

      Thou knowest my sins are many, and often I’ve played the fool —

      Whiskey and cards and women, they made me the devil’s tool.

      I was just like a child with money; I flung it away with a curse,

      Feasting a fawning parasite, or glutting a harlot’s purse;

      Then back to the woods repentant, back to the mill or the mine,

      I, the worker of workers, everything in my line.

      Everything hard but headwork (I’d no more brains than a kid),

      A brute with brute