To The Man Of The High North
Robert William Service 1874 – 1958
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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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 19, 2023
- 52 sec read
- 141 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABAB CDCD CECE FGFG HIHIJJ |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,037 |
Words | 173 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 6 |
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"To The Man Of The High North" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Mar. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/32707/to-the-man-of-the-high-north>.
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