Robert Service

Robert William Service (16 January, 1874 – 11 September, 1958) was a Canadian poet.

Sourced

• There's the wretched rent to pay,
  Yet I glower at pen and ink:
  Oh, inspire me, Muse, I pray,
  It is later than you think!
  • Ballads of a Bohemian (1921), It is later than you think

• "It's coming soon and soon, mother, it's nearer every day,
  When only men who work and sweat will have a word to say;
  When all who earn their honest bread in every land and soil
  Will claim the Brotherhood of Man, the Comradeship of Toil;
  When we, the Workers, all demand: `What are we fighting for?' . . .
  Then, then we'll end that stupid crime, that devil's madness -- War."
  • Ballads of a Bohemian (1921), Michael

The Law of the Yukon (1907)

• This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain:
  "Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane --
  Strong for the red rage of battle; sane for I harry them sore;
  Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core

• Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway;
  From my ruthless throne I have ruled alone for a million years and a day

• This is the Law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive;
  That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive.
  Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,
  This is the Will of the Yukon, -- Lo, how she makes it plain!

The Shooting of Dan McGrew (1907)

• A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
  The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a rag-time tune;
  Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
  And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that’s known as Lou.

• Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,
  And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear;
  With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold,
  A helf-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold;
  While high overhead, green, yellow, and red, the North Lights swept in bars? —
  Then you've a hunch what the music meant . . . hunger and might and the stars.

• But I want to state, and my words are straight, and I'll bet my poke they're true,
  That one of you is a hound of hell . . . and that one is Dan McGrew.