Who is Robert William Service

Robert William Service (January 16, 1874 – September 11, 1958) was a British-Canadian poet and writer, often called "the Bard of the Yukon". The middle name 'William' was in honour of a rich uncle. When that uncle neglected to provide for him in his will, Service dropped the middle name.Born in Lancashire of Scottish descent, he was a bank clerk by trade, but spent long periods travelling in the west in the United States and Canada, often in poverty. When his bank sent him to the Yukon, he was inspired by tales of the Klondike Gold Rush, and wrote two poems, "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee", which showed remarkable authenticity from an author with no experience of gold-mining, and enjoyed immediate popularity. Encouraged by this, he quickly wrote more poems ...
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Robert William Service Poems

  • Prelude: Ballads Of A Bohemian
    Alas! upon some starry height,
    The Gods of Excellence to please,
    This hand of mine will never smite
    The Harp of High Serenities. ...
  • L'envoi - Ballads Of A Bohemian
    We've finished up the filthy war;
    We've won what we were fighting for . . .
    (Or have we? I don't know).
    But anyway I have my wish: ...
  • The Bright Side
    Oh, one gets used to everything!
    I hum a merry song,
    And up the street and round the square
    I wheel my chair along; ...
  • L'envoi (songs Of A Sourdough)
    You who have lived in the Land,
    You who have trusted the trail;
    You who are strong to withstand,
    You who are swift to assail; ...
  • Rhymes Of A Rolling Stone - Prelude
    I sing no idle songs of dalliance days,
    No dreams Elysian inspire my rhyming;
    I have no Celia to enchant my lays,
    No pipes of Pan have set my heart to chiming. ...
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Top 10 most used topics by Robert William Service

Life 295 God 292 Never 262 Heart 262 I Love You 234 Love 234 Night 210 Away 194 Joy 179 Good 175


Robert William Service Quotes

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Comments about Robert William Service

Emmettbarnes10: god bless this young man cpl william robert embry jr. and his family for his service to america.
Spiesvespers: it's time for strange spy facts! advertising edition! among william donovan’s first recruits to coi, predecessor organization of oss, was pulitzer prize winning playwright, robert e. sherwood to head the foreign information service.
Gematriacodex: thread: who killed john f. kennedy? the killer wasn’t lee harvey oswald, as we were told, but william robert greer, jfk’s driver, an agent of the u.s. secret service, who drove the presidential limousine in the motorcade through dealey plaza and shot jfk dead on 11/22/1963.
Jaennecom: 2023-02-28 – dedication to providence by robert william service
Spiesvespers: it’s time for strange spy facts! theater and show folk edition! among william donovan’s first recruited to coi, predecessor organization of oss, was pulitzer prize winning playwright, robert e. sherwood to head the foreign information service
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David N Johnson: The Man From Athabasca takes on new life if you listen to Country Joe McDonald sing it in his War, War, War album. Look it up on YouTube. He did a studio version in 1971, and a live performance nearly forty years later. It grabs your heart.

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The Killing Place
 by Edgar Albert Guest

We're hiking along at a two-forty pace
We 're making life seem like a man-killing race,
With our nerves all on edge and our jaws firmly set
We go rushing along; with our brows lined with sweat
And our cheeks pale and drawn every minute we dash,
And the goal that we 're after is merely more cash.

We 're out for the money, the greenbacks and gold,
...

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