Eyrie
Robert William Service
The little pink house is high on the hill
And my heart is not what it used to be;
It will kick up a fuss I know, but still
I must toil up that twisty trail to see
What that empty old house can mean to me.
For a Poet lived there for donkey’s years,
A Poet of parts and founded fame.
He took to the bottle, it appears,
And hid up there to enjoy his shame . . .
Oh, no, I’ll never betray his name.
Then gaily he drank himself to death,
But, oh, on the rarest of mellow wine;
An exquisite way to end one’s breath -
Lachrimae Christi, I’d choose for mine,
To sip and souse in the sweet sunshine.
They say that poets are half divine;
I question if that is always true;
At least, our Poet was partly swine,
Drunk each day, with a drab or two,
Till Presto! he vanished from our view.
Maybe he was weary of woe and sin,
Or sick, and crawled like a dog to die;
Where the olives end and the pines begin,
He sought the peace of the sun and sky . . .
He would see no one, and I wonder why?
And so I must climb up, up some day
And try to picture my Poet there;
He sprawled on his rose-bowered porch, they say,
To smoke and fuddle and dream and stare
At the sapphire sea through the amber air.
He gave up the ghost with none to see;
In his bed, no doubt, though I’d fain surmise
It was yonder under the ilex tree,
Watching the sun in splendour rise,
With the glory of God-light in his eyes.
Well, he was a Lord of Radiant Rhyme;
His gift was godlike, one can’t deny,
But he quit in the glory of his prime
As if he despised us—I wonder why?
As if he found, where yon mountains soar,
Far from men-folk and heaven-high,
Peace and Beauty forever more . . .
Peace and Beauty—Ah! so would I.
