Robert William Service Poems

(The Wounded Canadian Speaks)

My leg? It's off at the knee.
Do I miss it? Well, some. You see
...

Oh ye whose hearts are resonant, and ring to War's romance,
Hear ye the story of a boy, a peasant boy of France;
A lad uncouth and warped with toil, yet who, when trial came,
Could feel within his soul upleap and soar the sacred flame;
...

The Spanish women don't wear slacks
Because their hips are too enormous.
'Tis true each bulbous bosom lacks
No inspiration that should warm us;
...

Franklin fathered bastards fourteen,
(So I read in the New Yorker);
If it's true, in terms of courtin'
Benny must have been a corker.
...

(Retold in Rhyme)

They threw him in a prison cell;
He moaned upon his bed.
...

I to a crumpled cabin came
upon a hillside high,
And with me was a withered dame
As weariful as I.
...

Up into the sky I stare;
All the little stars I see;
And I know that God is there
O, how lonely He must be!
...

With barbwire hooch they filled him full,
Till he was drunker than all hell,
And then they peddled him the bull
About a claim they had to sell.
...

He stared at me with sad, hurt eyes,
That drab, untidy man;
And though my clients I despise
I do the best I can
...

My only medals are the scars
I've won in weary, peacetime wars,
A-fighting for my little brood,
To win them shelter, shoon and food;
...