Robert W Service

My poem may be yours
In melody and tone,
If in its rhythm you can readA music of your own;
If in its pale woof you can

I sought Him on the purple seas,
I sought Him on the peaks aflame;
Amid the gloom of giant
And canyons lone I called His name;

Ma tried to wash her garden slacks but couldn't get 'em
And so she thought she'd soak 'em in a bucket o' benzine
It worked all right
She wrung 'em out then wondered what she'd

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 t...

I wanted the gold, and I sought it,
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave
Was it famine or scurvy — I fought it;
I hurled my youth into a grave

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;

There's a race of men that don't fit in, A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will
They range the field and they rove the flood, And they climb the mountain's crest;
Thei...

This crowded life of God's good
No man has relished more than I;
I've been so goldarned busy livingI've never had the time to die
So busy fishing, hunting, roving,

I watched one day a parrot grey - 'twas in a barber shop
"Cuckold
" he cried, until I sighed: "You feathered devil, stop
"Then balefully he looked at me, and slid along his perch,

O God, take the sun from the sky
It's burning me, scorching me up
God, can't You hear my cry
Water

To Dawson Town came Percy Brown from London on the Thames
A pane of glass was in his eye, and stockings on his stems
Upon the shoulder of his coat a leather pad he wore,
To rest his deadly rifle when it wasn't seeking gore;

If dogs could speak,
O Mademoiselle,
What funny stories they could tell
For instance, take your little "peke,"How awkward if the dear could speak