The Rhyme Of The Remittance Man



There's a four-pronged buck a-swinging in the shadow of my cabin,
    And it roamed the velvet valley till to-day;
But I tracked it by the river, and I trailed it in the cover,
    And I killed it on the mountain miles away.
Now I've had my lazy supper, and the level sun is gleaming
    On the water where the silver salmon play;
And I light my little corn-cob, and I linger, softly dreaming,
    In the twilight, of a land that's far away.

Far away, so faint and far, is flaming London, fevered Paris,
    That I fancy I have gained another star;
Far away the din and hurry, far away the sin and worry,
    Far away -- God knows they cannot be too far.
Gilded galley-slaves of Mammon -- how my purse-proud brothers taunt me!
    I might have been as well-to-do as they
Had I clutched like them my chances, learned their wisdom, crushed my fancies,
    Starved my soul and gone to business every day.

Well, the cherry bends with blossom and the vivid grass is springing,
    And the star-like lily nestles in the green;
And the frogs their joys are singing, and my heart in tune is ringing,
    And it doesn't matter what I might have been.
While above the scented pine-gloom, piling heights of golden glory,
    The sun-god paints his canvas in the west,
I can couch me deep in clover, I can listen to the story
    Of the lazy, lapping water -- it is best.

While the trout leaps in the river, and the blue grouse thrills the cover,
    And the frozen snow betrays the panther's track,
And the robin greets the dayspring with the rapture of a lover,
    I am happy, and I'll nevermore go back.
For I know I'd just be longing for the little old log cabin,
    With the morning-glory clinging to the door,
Till I loathed the city places, cursed the care on all the faces,
    Turned my back on lazar London evermore.

So send me far from Lombard Street, and write me down a failure;
    Put a little in my purse and leave me free.
Say: "He turned from Fortune's offering to follow up a pale lure,
    He is one of us no longer -- let him be."
I am one of you no longer; by the trails my feet have broken,
    The dizzy peaks I've scaled, the camp-fire's glow;
By the lonely seas I've sailed in -- yea, the final word is spoken,
    I am signed and sealed to nature. Be it so.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 09, 2023

2:10 min read
117

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCBDBDB XEFEFBXB DXDXFGFG CHCHAIXI CFXFAJAJ
Closest metre Iambic heptameter
Characters 2,243
Words 424
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8, 8, 8

Robert William Service

Robert William Service was a poet and writer sometimes referred to as the Bard of the Yukon He is best-known for his writings on the Canadian North including the poems The Shooting of Dan McGrew The Law of the Yukon and The Cremation of Sam McGee His writing was so expressive that his readers took him for a hard-bitten old Klondike prospector not the later-arriving bank clerk he actually was Robert William Service was born 16 January 1874 in Preston England but also lived in Scotland before emigrating to Canada in 1894 Service went to the Yukon Territory in 1904 as a bank clerk and became famous for his poems about this region which are mostly in his first two books of poetry He wrote quite a bit of prose as well and worked as a reporter for some time but those writings are not nearly as well known as his poems He travelled around the world quite a bit and narrowly escaped from France at the beginning of the Second World War during which time he lived in Hollywood California He died 11 September 1958 in France Incidentally he played himself in a movie called The Spoilers starring John Wayne and Marlene Dietrich more…

All Robert William Service poems | Robert William Service Books

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