Robert Service
This author is the the British-Canadian writer of Yukon poetry. For the British historian of modern Russia, see Robert Service.
Robert William Service was born into a Scottish family while they were living in Preston, England. He was schooled in Scotland, attending Hillhead High School in Glasgow. He moved to Canada at the age of 21 when he gave up his job working in a Glasgow bank, and traveled to Vancouver Island, British Columbia with his Buffalo Bill outfit and dreams of becoming a cowboy.
He drifted around western North America, taking and quitting a series of jobs. Hired by the Canadian Bank of Commerce, he worked in a number of its branches before being posted to the branch in Whitehorse (not Dawson) in the Yukon Territory in 1904, six years after the Klondike Gold Rush. Inspired by the vast beauty of the Yukon wilderness, Service began writing poetry about the things he saw.
Conversations with locals led him to write about things he hadn't seen, many of which hadn't actually happened, as well. He did not set foot in Dawson City until 1908, arriving in the Klondike ten years after the Gold Rush, but his renown as a writer was already established.
For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Service.
“It wallowed in its water-bed; it burrowed, heaved and swung; It gnawed its way ahead with grunts and sighs; Its bill of fare was rock and sand; the tailings were its dung; It glared around with fierce electric eyes. Full fifty buckets crammed its maw; it bellowed out for more; It looked like some great monster in the gloom.”
“Even goats may have starlight in their eyes.”
“Our breath is brief, and being soLet's make our heaven here below,And lavish kindness as we go.”
“Dirt is just matter out of place.”
“The man who can fight to heaven's own height is the man who can fight when he's losing.”
“Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big, worthwhile things. It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out - it's the grain of sand in your shoe.”
“There's a race of men that don't fit in, A race that can't sit still;So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will.They range the field and rove the flood, And they climb the mountain's crest; Their's is the curse of the gypsy blood, And they don't know how to rest.”
“The following obituary appeared in the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph of Sept. 16, 1958:A GREAT POET died last week in Lancieux, France, at the age of 84.He was not a poet's poet. Fancy-Dan dilletantes will dispute the description "great."He was a people's poet. To the people he was great. They understood him, and knew that any verse carrying the by-line of Robert W. Service would be a lilting thing, clear, clean and power-packed, beating out a story with a dramatic intensity that made the nerves tingle.And he was no poor, garret-type poet, either. His stuff made money hand over fist. One piece alone, The Shooting of Dan McGrew, rolled up half a million dollars for him. He lived it up well and also gave a great deal to help others."The only society I like," he once said, "is that which is rough and tough - and the tougher the better. That's where you get down to bedrock and meet human people."He found that kind of society in the Yukon gold rush, and he immortalized it.”