The Younger Son

by Robert Service

If you leave the gloom of London and you seek a glowing land,
Where all except the flag is strange and new,
There’s a bronzed and stalwart fellow who will grip you by the hand,
And greet you with a welcome warm and true;
For he’s your younger brother, the one you sent away
Because there wasn’t room for him at home;
And now he’s quite contented, and he’s glad he didn’t stay,
And he’s building Britain’s greatness o’er the foam.

When the giant herd is moving at the rising of the sun,
And the prairie is lit with rose and gold,
And the camp is all a busstle, and the busy day’s begun,
He leaps into the saddle sure and bold.
Through the round of heat and hurry, through the racket and the rout,
He rattles at a pace that nothing mars;
And when the night-winds whisper and camp-fires flicker out,
He is sleeping like a child beneath the stars.

When the wattle-blooms are drooping in the somber shed-oak glade,
And the breathless land is lying in a swoon,
He leaves his work a moment, leaning lightly on his spade,
And he hears the bell-bird chime the Austral noon.
The parakeets are silent in the gum-tree by the creek;
The ferny grove is sunshine-steeped and still;
But the dew will gem the myrtle in the twilight ere he seek
His little lonely cabin on the hill.

Around the purple, vine-clad slope the argent river dreams;
The roses almost hide the house from view;
A snow-peak of the Winterberg in crimson splendor gleams;
The shadow deepens down on the karroo.
He seeks the lily-scented dusk beneath the orange tree;
His pipe in silence glows and fades and glows;
And then two little maids come out and climb upon his knee,
And one is like the lily, one the rose.
He sees his white sheep dapple o’er the green New Zealand plain,
And where Vancouver’s shaggy ramparts frown,
When the sunlight threads the pine-gloom he is fighting might and main
To clinch the rivets of an Empire down.
You will find him toiling, toiling, in the south or in the west,
A child of nature, fearless, frank, and free;
And the warmest heart that beats for you is beating in his breast,
And he sends you loyal greeting o’er the sea.

You’ve a brother in the army, you’ve another in the Church;
One of you is a diplomatic swell;
You’ve had the pick of everything and left him in the lurch,
And yet I think he’s doing very well.
I’m sure his life is happy, and he doesn’t envy yours;
I know he loves the land his pluck has won;
And I fancy in the years unborn, while England’s fame endures,
She will come to bless with pride — The Younger Son.

The Song of the Mouth-Organ

By Robert Service

I’m a homely little bit of tin and bone;
I’m beloved by the Legion of the Lost;
I haven’t got a “vox humana” tone,
And a dime or two will satisfy my cost.
I don’t attempt your high-falutin’ flights;
I am more or less uncertain on the key;
But I tell you, boys, there’s lots and lots of nights
When you’ve taken mighty comfort out of me.

I weigh an ounce or two, and I’m so small
You can pack me in the pocket of your vest;
And when at night so wearily you crawl
Into your bunk and stretch your limbs to rest,
You take me out and play me soft and low,
The simple songs that trouble your heartstrings;
The tunes you used to fancy long ago,
Before you made a rotten mess of things.

Then a dreamy look will come into your eyes,
And you break off in the middle of a note;
And then, with just the dreariest of sighs,
You drop me in the pocket of your coat.
But somehow I have bucked you up a bit;
And, as you turn around and face the wall,
You don’t feel quite so spineless and unfit —
You’re not so bad a fellow after all.

Do you recollect the bitter Arctic night;
Your camp beside the canyon on the trail;
Your tent a tiny square of orange light;
The moon above consumptive-like and pale;
Your supper cooked, your little stove aglow;
You tired, but snug and happy as a child?
Then ’twas “Turkey in the Straw” till your lips were nearly raw,
And you hurled your bold defiance at the Wild.

Do you recollect the flashing, lashing pain;
The gulf of humid blackness overhead;
The lightning making rapiers of the rain;
The cattle-horns like candles of the dead
You sitting on your bronco there alone,
In your slicker, saddle-sore and sick with cold?
Do you think the silent herd did not hear “The Mocking Bird”,
Or relish “Silver Threads among the Gold”?

Do you recollect the wild Magellan coast;
The head-winds and the icy, roaring seas;
The nights you thought that everything was lost;
The days you toiled in water to your knees;
The frozen ratlines shrieking in the gale;
The hissing steeps and gulfs of livid foam:
When you cheered your messmates nine with “Ben Bolt” and “Clementine”,
And “Dixie Land” and “Seeing Nellie Home”?

Let the jammy banjo voice the Younger Son,
Who waits for his remittance to arrive;
I represent the grimy, gritty one,
Who sweats his bones to keep himself alive;
Who’s up against the real thing from his birth;
Whose heritage is hard and bitter toil;
I voice the weary, smeary ones of earth,
The helots of the sea and of the soil.

I’m the Steinway of strange mischief and mischance;
I’m the Stradivarius of blank defeat;
In the down-world, when the devil leads the dance,
I am simply and symbolically meet;
I’m the irrepressive spirit of mankind;
I’m the small boy playing knuckle down with Death;
At the end of all things known, where God’s rubbish-heap is thrown,
I shrill impudent triumph at a breath.

I’m a humble little bit of tin and horn;
I’m a byword, I’m a plaything, I’m a jest;
The virtuoso looks on me with scorn;
But there’s times when I am better than the best.
Ask the stoker and the sailor of the sea;
Ask the mucker and the hewer of the pine;
Ask the herder of the plain, ask the gleaner of the grain —
There’s a lowly, loving kingdom — and it’s mine.

Ulysses

It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,–
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me–
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads–you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

The greatest of all island poems.

May we all learn to live our lives thusly!

ITHAKA

When you set out for Ithaka, ask that your way be long

Full of instruction, full of adventure.

The Laistrogonians and the Cyclops, angry Poseidon,

You will not meet them as long as your thought is lofty,

as long as a rare emotion touch your spirit and your thought.

The Laistrogonians and the Cyclops, angry Poseidon

you will not meet them unless you carry them in your Soul,

unless your Soul raise them up before you.

Ask that your way be long, at many a summer’s dawn to enter,

with what Gratitude ! what Joy! Ports seen for the first time;

To visit the great Phoenician trading centers and to buy good merchandise,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony

and sensuous perfumes of every kind,

sensuous perfumes as lavishly as you can.

Have Ithaka always in your mind

but do not in the least hurry the journey.

Better that it last for years so that, when you reach the island,

you are old, rich with all you have gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth.

Ithaka gave you the splendid journey.

With out her you would not have set out.

She has nothing else to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka has not deceived you .

So wise have you become, of such experience

that already you will understand

what these Ithakas mean.

Constantine Cavafy

(who was described by a friend as:

“a small man, in a straw hat, standing

at a slight angle to the universe”)