Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Rhymes of a Rolling Stone
    Rhymes of a Rolling Stone
    Rhymes of a Rolling Stone
    Ebook166 pages1 hour

    Rhymes of a Rolling Stone

    By Robert W. (Robert William) Service

    ()

    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJan 1, 1977
    Rhymes of a Rolling Stone

    Read more from Robert W. (Robert William) Service

    Related to Rhymes of a Rolling Stone

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Speak, Memories

      Jun 11, 2022

      Speak, Memories
      1 min read

    • Article

      There Be Treasure, Danger And Death

      Dec 3, 2019

      What if I told you there is a treasure chest filled with precious gemstones, gold nuggets and priceless artifacts hidden somewhere in the Rocky Mountains? That an eccentric art collector buried an antique, metal box worth over $5 million dollars some

      7 min read

    • Article

      How Dark Were The Dark Ages?

      Feb 20, 2020

      How Dark Were The Dark Ages?
      10 min read

    • Article

      Key Chain

      Feb 19, 2019

      Key Chain
      10 min read

    • Article

      In November, BBC Radio’s Danny Robins Shared The Story Of A ‘Poltergeist’ That Once Wrought Havoc In A Belfast Tower Block. But There’s Now A New Twist To The Tale...

      Nov 25, 2021

      Christmas isn’t just a time for receiving unwanted socks and avoiding Brussels sprouts. The true purpose of the festive season is to tell ghost stories. There’s a long tradition of the spooky winter’s tale, stretching back to medieval times; a rush o

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Sinkhole Hunters: In sprawling Florida, one group of geologists is never short on business.

      May 14, 2015

      One day last May, a muddy truck bound down a dirt road through the backwoods of Gainesville, Florida. It pulled up in a cloud of dust to a sprawling green farmhouse with a wide front porch, nestled among cypress trees dripping in gray Spanish moss. H

      13 min read

    • Article

      Highclere Castle AT CHRISTMAS

      Nov 6, 2019

      Highclere Castle AT CHRISTMAS
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Volcano That Shrouded the Earth and Gave Birth to a Monster

      Oct 5, 2017

      Two hundred years ago, the greatest eruption in Earth’s recorded history took place. Mount Tambora—located on Sumbawa Island in the East Indies—blew itself up with apocalyptic force in April 1815. After perhaps 1,000 years’ dormancy, the devastating

      18 min read

    • Article

      The Epic Of Gilgamesh

      Jan 1, 2020

      My friends, who can reach heaven? The monster bellows like a river swollen with flood.Many are consumed in his fiery breath. My friends, who can reach heaven? Let us ask the mountain for a sign.Let us cut the spirits from the cedars. My friends, who

      3 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2023

      And god created the waves and we the graves beneath, bodies madeparticulate by the force of water against water, water against rock, againsttime. I descend into the deep in a kind of prayer, listen to its centuries.Make me pay, will you, make me hurt

      3 min read

    • Article

      from BLACK PASTORAL

      Nov 1, 2023

      somewheres, some lifetimes ago I have run so far, so long.There is nowhere I haven’t beenBut here, in this field, a bodyLength from the ragged brinkThat gives way to forest.I collapsed here, the thin, hard slipOf me whittled at both ends.I want badly

      4 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jul 1, 2022

      The embers of a Thousand YearsUncovered by the HandThat fondled them when they were FireWill stir and understand——from Emily Dickinson’s “1383” Remember when we hurriedourselves into the evening’s sacral blaze: Our coal-covered bridal gownsdrenched i

      6 min read

    • Article

      Until The Sea Closed Over Us And The Light Was Gone

      Jul 1, 2020

      —Dante, Canto XXVI But if the truth is dreamed of toward the morning—El Paso Although it was really last summer’s song,all this summer Despacito played on as slower then I turned myself to gazeupon Juarez. The summer everything hurts my eyes, a dozen

      6 min read

    • Article

      Press-ganged!

      Jun 13, 2019

      Press-ganged!
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Island (catullus 64)

      Mar 1, 2022

      Back then the evergreens tumbled downriverfrom the glaze-white runoff to the boot-stirred puddlesof amber young men who fulfilled our destiny,who clambered into ships, on horses, and in wagonspainting the newfound landscapes ours.Our calling was nobl

      9 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems by Phillip B. Williams

      Dec 15, 2017

      The masters are yet dead. Wanting to be human,I tried to rewrite The Waste Land. The canon’s reachcasts ruinous light. The masters’ pens breachthis page where, above, my own hand spectates. Babylonrisen, exorcism in reverse, whose nature upended now?

      6 min read

    • Article

      Press Ganged!

      May 1, 2020

      Press Ganged!
      3 min read

    • Article

      AUSTRALOPITHECA1 & STARMAN2

      Sep 1, 2019

      The countdown to you begyns with me, deere Starman, when I wander, dumbly, deep into a space hospittable to Hunger. Now, all’s desert. No milk in syte. Just pitifull sand, what shushes as it slydes through your hande to rejoin itself. I’d join myself

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Call Of The Wild

      Nov 30, 2020

      The Call Of The Wild
      2 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Nov 1, 2023

      For I woke with a walnut for a skullFor every star switched on, burning through black pagesFor if you seek God you will find His childrenFor everything I know fits in a walnutFor every scene I once lived now invisible For I didn’t want to meet people

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Tidal Man

      May 3, 2018

      The Tidal Man
      3 min read

    • Article

      Seven Poems

      May 1, 2022

      Seven Poems
      2 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      May 1, 2019

      “My arm is so brown and so beautiful,” is a thought I haveas I’m about to turn off the lamp and go to sleep.I look at it a moment in the soft glow, and see it, briefly,as though it belonged to someone else. A reddishkind of brown, like a toasted almo

      7 min read

    Reviews for Rhymes of a Rolling Stone

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Rhymes of a Rolling Stone - Robert W. (Robert William) Service

      Project Gutenberg's Rhymes of a Rolling Stone, by Robert W. Service

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

      Title: Rhymes of a Rolling Stone

      Author: Robert W. Service

      Release Date: July 10, 2008 [EBook #309]

      Last Updated: January 15, 2013

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RHYMES OF A ROLLING STONE ***

      Produced by A. Light, and David Widger

      RHYMES OF A ROLLING STONE

      by Robert W. Service

      [British-born Canadian Poet — 1874-1958.]

      Author of The Spell of the Yukon, Ballads of a Cheechako, etc.

      1912 edition, 1917 printing

      [Some very minor changes have been made in spelling and punctuation after consulting another edition.] literary sins — The other kind don't matter.

      CONTENTS

      RHYMES OF A ROLLING STONE

      A Rolling Stone

      The Soldier of Fortune

      The Gramaphone at Fond-Du-Lac

      The Land of Beyond

      Sunshine

      The Idealist

      Athabaska Dick

      Cheer

      The Return

      The Junior God

      The Nostomaniac

      Ambition

      To Sunnydale

      The Blind and the Dead

      The Atavist

      The Sceptic

      The Rover

      Barb-Wire Bill

      ?

      Just Think!

      The Lunger

      The Mountain and the Lake

      The Headliner and the Breadliner

      Death in the Arctic

      Dreams Are Best

      The Quitter

      The Cow-Juice Cure

      While the Bannock Bakes

      The Lost Master

      Little Moccasins

      The Wanderlust

      The Trapper's Christmas Eve

      The World's All Right

      The Baldness of Chewed-Ear

      The Mother

      The Dreamer

      At Thirty-Five

      The Squaw Man

      Home and Love

      I'm Scared of it All

      A Song of Success

      The Song of the Camp-Fire

      Her Letter

      The Man Who Knew

      The Logger

      The Passing of the Year

      The Ghosts

      Good-Bye, Little Cabin

      Heart o' the North

      The Scribe's Prayer

      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.

                I am no wordsmith dripping gems divine

                Into the golden chalice of a sonnet;

                If love songs witch you, close this book of mine,

                    Waste no time on it.

      Yet bring I to my work an eager joy,

                A lusty love of life and all things human;

                Still in me leaps the wonder of the boy,

                A pride in man, a deathless faith in woman.

                Still red blood calls, still rings the valiant fray;

                Adventure beacons through the summer gloaming:

                Oh long and long and long will be the day

                    Ere I come homing!

      This earth is ours to love:  lute, brush and pen,

                They are but tongues to tell of life sincerely;

                The thaumaturgic Day, the might of men,

                O God of Scribes, grant us to grave them clearly!

                Grant heart that homes in heart, then all is well.

                Honey is honey-sweet, howe'er the hiving.

                Each to his work, his wage at evening bell

                    The strength of striving.

      A Rolling Stone

      There's sunshine in the heart of me,

                My blood sings in the breeze;

                The mountains are a part of me,

                I'm fellow to the trees.

                My golden youth I'm squandering,

                Sun-libertine am I;

                A-wandering, a-wandering,

                Until the day I die.

           I was once, I declare, a Stone-Age man,

            And I roomed in the cool of a cave;

           I have known, I will swear, in a new life-span,

            The fret and the sweat of a slave:

           For far over all that folks hold worth,

            There lives and there leaps in me

           A love of the lowly things of earth,

            And a passion to be free.

           To pitch my tent with no prosy plan,

            To range and to change at will;

           To mock at the mastership of man,

            To seek Adventure's thrill.

           Carefree to be, as a bird that sings;

            To go my own sweet way;

           To reck not at all what may befall,

            But to live and to love each day.

           To make my body a temple pure

            Wherein I dwell serene;

           To care for the things that shall endure,

            The simple, sweet and clean.

           To oust out envy and hate and rage,

            To breathe with no alarm;

           For Nature shall be my anchorage,

            And none shall do me harm.

           To shun all lures that debauch the soul,

            The orgied rites of the rich;

           To eat my crust as a rover must

            With the rough-neck down in the ditch.

           To trudge by his side whate'er betide;

            To share his fire at night;

           To call him friend to the long trail-end,

            And to read his heart aright.

           To scorn all strife, and to view all life

            With the curious eyes of a child;

           From the plangent sea to the prairie,

            From the slum to the heart of the Wild.

           From the red-rimmed star to the speck of sand,

            From the vast to the greatly small;

           For I know that the whole for good is planned,

            And I want to see it all.

           To see it all, the wide world-way,

            From the fig-leaf belt to the Pole;

           With never a one to say me nay,

            And none to cramp my soul.

           In belly-pinch I will pay the price,

            But God! let me be free;

           For once I know in the long ago,

            They made a slave of me.

           In a flannel shirt from earth's clean dirt,

            Here, pal, is my calloused hand!

           Oh, I love each day as a rover may,

            Nor seek to understand.

           To ENJOY is good enough for me;

            The gipsy of God am I;

           Then here's a hail to each flaring dawn!

           And here's a cheer to the night that's gone!

           And may I go a-roaming on

            Until the day I die!

      Then every star shall sing to me

                Its song of liberty;

                And every morn shall bring to me

                Its mandate to be free.

                In every throbbing vein of me

                I'll feel the vast Earth-call;

                O body, heart and brain of me

                Praise Him who made it all!

      The Soldier of Fortune

           Deny your God! they ringed me with their spears;

           Blood-crazed were they, and reeking from the strife;

           Hell-hot their hate, and venom-fanged their sneers,

           And one man spat on me and nursed a knife.

           And there was I, sore wounded and alone,

           I, the last living of my slaughtered band.

           Oh sinister the sky, and cold as stone!

           In one red laugh of horror reeled the land.

           And dazed and desperate I faced their spears,

           And like a flame out-leaped that naked knife,

           And like a serpent stung their bitter jeers:

           Deny your God, and we will give you life.

           Deny my God!  Oh life was very sweet!

           And it is hard in youth and hope to die;

           And there my comrades dear lay at my feet,

           And in that blear of blood soon must I lie.

           And yet . . . I almost laughed — it seemed so odd,

           For long and long had I not vainly tried

           To reason out and body forth my God,

           And prayed for light, and doubted — and DENIED:

           Denied the Being I could not conceive,

           Denied a life-to-be beyond the grave. . . .

           And now they ask me, who do not believe,

           Just to deny, to voice my doubt, to save

           This life of mine that sings so in the sun,

           The bloom of youth yet red upon my cheek,

           My only life! — O fools! 'tis easy done,

           I will deny . . . and yet I do not speak.

           Deny your God! their spears are all agleam,

           And I can see their eyes with blood-lust shine;

           Their snarling voices shrill into a scream,

           And, mad to slay, they quiver for the sign.

           Deny my God! yes, I could do it

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1