Some praise the Lord for Light,
The living spark;
I thank God for the Night
The healing dark.
—Robert W. Service
Topics: Sleep
Old Year! upon the Stage of Time You stand to bow your last adieu; A moment, and the prompter’s chime Will ring the curtain down on you.
—Robert W. Service
Topics: Progress
It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out; it’s the grain of sand in your shoe.
—Robert W. Service
Topics: Challenges, Perspective
It’s a different song when everything’s wrong, when you’re feeling infernally mortal; when it’s ten against one, and hope there is none, buck up, little soldier, and chortle!
—Robert W. Service
Topics: Adversity
The happy man is he who knows his limitations, yet bows to no false gods.
—Robert W. Service
Topics: Self-Knowledge, Awareness
Ah! the clock is always slow; it is later than you think.
—Robert W. Service
Topics: Time Management, Time, Value of Time
Why seek to scale Mount Everest,
Queen of the Air,
Why strive to crown that cruel crest
And deathward dare?
Said Mallory of dauntless quest
‘Because it’s there.’
—Robert W. Service
Topics: Discovery
I wrote a poem to the moon
But no one noticed it;
Although I hoped that late or soon
Someone would praise a bit
Its purity and grace forlone,
Its beauty tulip-cool…
But as my poem died still-born,
I felt a fool.
I wrote a verse of vulgar trend
Spiced with an oath or two;
I tacked a snapper at the end
And called it Dan McGrew.
I spouted it to bar-room boys,
Full fifty years away;
Yet still with rude and ribald noise
It lives today.
‘Tis bitter truth, but there you are-
That’s how a name is made;
Write of a rose, a lark, a star,
You’ll never make the grade.
But write of gutter and of grime,
Of pimp and prostitute,
The multitude will read your rhyme,
And pay to boot.
So what’s the use to burn and bleed
And strive for beauty’s sake?
No one your poetry will read,
Your heart will only break.
But set your song in vulgar pitch,
If rhyme you will not rue,
And make your heroine a bitch…
Like Lady Lou.
—Robert W. Service
Topics: Authors & Writing
There’s a land where the mountains are nameless, And the rivers all run God knows where; There are lives that are erring and aimless, And deaths that just hang by a hair; There are hardships that nobody reckons; There’s a land – oh, it beckons and beckons, And I want to go back – and I will.
—Robert W. Service
Topics: Travel, Wilderness
A promise made is a debt unpaid.
—Robert W. Service
Topics: Promises
It’s the plugging away that will win you the day
So don’t be a piker old pard!
Just draw on your grit; it’s so easy to quit.
It’s the keeping your chin up that’s hard.
—Robert W. Service
Topics: Resolve, Endurance, Perseverance
My pipe is out, my glass is dry;
My fire is almost ashes too;
But once again, before you go,
And I prepare to meet the New;
Old Year! a parting word that’s true,
For we’ve been comrades, you and I—
I thank God for each day of you;
There! bless you now! Old Year, good-bye!
—Robert W. Service
Topics: Time
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Tobias Smollett Scottish Poet
- George MacDonald Scottish Poet, Novelist
- Robert Burns Scottish Poet, Songwriter
- Ernest Hemingway American Author
- Hans Christian Andersen Danish Author
- George William Russell Irish Author
- Nathaniel Parker Willis American Poet, Playwright
- Robert Louis Stevenson Scottish Novelist
- Samuel Rutherford Scottish Presbyterian Theologian
- J. M. Barrie Scottish Novelist
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