To The Man Of The High North

Robert William Service

My rhymes are rough, and often in my rhyming
        I’ve drifted, silver-sailed, on seas of dream,
Hearing afar the bells of Elfland chiming,
        Seeing the groves of Arcadie agleam.

I was the thrall of Beauty that rejoices
        From peak snow-diademed to regal star;
Yet to mine aerie ever pierced the voices,
        The pregnant voices of the Things That Are.

The Here, the Now, the vast Forlorn around us;
        The gold-delirium, the ferine strife;
The lusts that lure us on, the hates that hound us;
        Our red rags in the patch-work quilt of Life.

The nameless men who nameless rivers travel,
        And in strange valleys greet strange deaths alone;
The grim, intrepid ones who would unravel
        The mysteries that shroud the Polar Zone.

These will I sing, and if one of you linger
        Over my pages in the Long, Long Night,
And on some lone line lay a calloused finger,
        Saying: “Lo! It’s human-true—it hits me right”;
Then will I count this loving toil well spent;
Then will I dream awhile—content, content.

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