THE CALL OF THE WILD

THE  CALL  OF  THE  WILD

Have you gazed on naked grandeur

Where there's nothing else to gaze on,

Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,

Big mountains heaved to heaven,

Which the blinding sunsets blazon,

Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?

Have you swept the visioned valley

With the green stream streaking through it,

Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?

Have you strung your soul to silence?

Then for God's sake go and do it;

Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.

 

Have you wandered in the wilderness,

The sagebrush desolation,

The bunch-grass levels where the cattle graze?

Have you whistled bits of rag-time

At the end of all creation,

And learned to know the desert's little ways?

Have you camped upon the foothills,

Have you galloped o’er the ranges,

Have you roamed the arid sun-lands through and through?

Have you chummed up with the mesa?

Do you know its moods and changes?

Then listen to the Wild - it's calling you.

 

Have you known the Great White Silence,

Not a snow-gemmed twig aquiver?

(Eternal truths that shame our soothing lies.)

Have you broken trail on snowshoes?

Mushed your huskies up the river,

Dared the unknown, led the way, and clutched the prize?

Have you marked the map's void spaces,

Mingled with the mongrel races,

Felt the savage strength of brute in every thew?

And though grim as hell the worst is,

Can you round it off with curses?

Then hearken to the Wild - it's wanting you.

Have you suffered, starved and triumphed,

Groveled down, yet grasped at glory,

Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole?

“Done things” just for the doing,

Letting babblers tell the story,

Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul?

Have you seen God in His splendors,

Heard the text that nature renders?

(You'll never hear it in the family pew.)

The simple things, the true things,

The silent men who do things -

Then listen to the Wild - it's calling you.

 

They have cradled you in custom,

they have primed you with their preaching,

They have soaked you in convention through and through;

They have put you in a showcase;

You’re a credit to their teaching -

But can't you hear the Wild? - it's calling you.

Let us probe the silent places,

Let us seek what luck betide us;

Let us journey to a lonely land I know.

There's a whisper on the night-wind,

There's a star agleam to guide us,

And the Wild is calling, calling . . . let us go.

 

                                                Robert  Service

ANACREON ODE XXVI

ANACREON  ODE  XXVI

Thy harp may sing of Troy’s alarms,

Or tell the tale of Theban arms;

With other wars my song shall burn,

For other wounds my harp shall mourn.

‘ Twas not the crested warrior’s dart,

Which drank the current of my heart;

Nor naval arms, nor mailed steed,

Have made this vanquished bosom bleed;

No - from an eye of liquid blue,

A host of quiver’d Cupids flew;

And now my heart all bleeding lies

Beneath this army of the eyes !

                                 Anacreon  507 - 488 BC

FACILITY

FACILITY

So easy ‘tis to make a rhyme,

That did the world but know it,

Your coachman might Parnassus climb,

Your butler be a poet.

 

Then, oh, how charming it would be

If, when in haste hysteric

You called the page, you learned that he

Was grappling with a lyric.

 

Or else what rapture it would yield,

When cook sent up the salad,

To find within its depths concealed

A touching little ballad.

 

Or if for tea and toast you yearned,

What joy to find upon it

The chambermaid had coyly laid

A palpitating sonnet.

 

Your baker could the fashion set,

Your butcher might respond well,

With every tart a triolet,

With every chop a rondel.

 

Your tailor's bill . . . well, I’ll be blowed!

Dear chap! I never knowed him . . .

He's gone and written me an ode,

Instead of what I owed him.

 

So easy ‘tis to rhyme . . . yet stay!

Oh, terrible misgiving!

Please do not give the game away . . .

I've got to make my living.

 

                                 Robert  Service

 

NOTES

The above poem is from a collection of poems included under the title “ Ballads of a Bohemian “ written by Robert Service after he moved to Paris in 1913. He divided this collection into four books; “Spring,” “Early Summer,” “Late Summer,” and “Winter.” Along with the poems are diary entries describing his experiences while living in a garret room on Montparnasse under the persona of an American poet named Stephen Poore. The last diary entry is dated January 1919 and the collection was first published in 1921.