Ballads of a Bohemian

By Robert W. Service

This book contains a beautiful collection of poems linked through a common narration by the "author" Stephen Poore. These poems detail his bohemian life in Paris prior to the war, his experiences during World War I, and his life in the aftermath of the war. A fantastic collection of poesy that will be enjoyed by all lovers of poetry, this book shall especially appeal to fans of Service's seminal work. Robert William Service (1874 - 1958) was a prolific British-Canadian writer and poet, most famous for his poems, "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee". Elected for modern republication due to its immense literary value, this book is proudly republished here complete with a new prefatory biography of the author. Ballads Of A Bohemian was originally published in 1922.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: May 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781473374959

Robert W. Service

Robert W. Service (1874-1958) was born in Preston, Lancashire, England, and came to Canada in 1895, eventually ending up in Yukon Territory in 1904, five years after the Klondike Gold Rush. His many books include the poetry collection The Songs of a Sourdough, the novel The Trail of '98, and the autobiography Ploughman of the Moon. Service later moved to France, where he died.

Book preview

BALLADS OF A BOHEMIAN

by

Robert W. Service

Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.

This book is copyright and may not be

reproduced or copied in any way without

the express permission of the publisher in writing

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Contents

Robert William Service

Prelude

BOOK ONE ~~ SPRING

I

My Garret

Julot the Apache

II

L’Escargot D’Or

It Is Later Than You Think

Noctambule

III

Insomnia

Moon Song

The Sewing-Girl

IV

Lucille

On the Boulevard

Facility

V

Golden Days

The Joy of Little Things

The Absinthe Drinkers

BOOK TWO ~~ EARLY SUMMER

I

The Release

The Wee Shop

The Philistine and the Bohemian

II

The Bohemian Dreams

A Domestic Tragedy

The Pencil Seller

III

Fi-Fi in Bed

Gods in the Gutter

The Death of Marie Toro

IV

The Bohemian

The Auction Sale

The Joy of Being Poor. I

V

My Neighbors

Room 4: The Painter Chap

Room 6: The Little Workgirl

Room 7: The Coco-Fiend

BOOK THREE ~~ LATE SUMMER

I

The Philanderer

The Petit Vieux

My Masterpiece

My Book

My Hour

II

A Song of Sixty-Five

Teddy Bear

The Outlaw

The Walkers

(He speaks.)

III

Poor Peter

The Wistful One

If You Had a Friend

The Contented Man

The Spirit of the Unborn Babe

IV

Finistère

Old David Smail

Another day.

The Wonderer

Oh, It Is Good

V

I Have Some Friends

The Quest

The Comforter

The Other One

Catastrophe

BOOK FOUR ~~ WINTER

I

Priscilla

A Casualty

The Blood-Red Fourragère

Jim

II

Kelly of the Legion

The Three Tommies

The Twa Jocks

III

His Boys

The Booby-Trap

Bonehead Bill

IV

Michael

The Wife

Victory Stuff

Was It You?

V

Les Grands Mutiles

The Sightless Man

The Legless Man

(The Dark Side)

The Faceless Man

L’Envoi

Notes.

Robert William Service

Robert William Service was born on 16 January 1874, in Preston, Lancashire, England. Best known as a poet and writer, labelled ‘the Bard of the Yukon’, Service’s tales have often been considered doggerel by the literary elite, yet remain extremely popular to this day. He was the first of ten children, and spent much of his early education in Kilwinning and Glasgow, Scotland. His father was a banker, originally from Kilwinning, who decided to send his son to live with his Scottish relatives from the age of five. After leaving school, Service joined the Commercial Bank of Scotland, but utilised much of his spare time reading and writing poetry. Service was reportedly already selling his verses by this point. The banking profession bored him however, and he travelled to Canada, with dreams of becoming a Cowboy. He drifted around western North America, ‘wandering from California to British Columbia… starving in Mexico, residing in a California bordello, farming on Vancouver Island and pursuing unrequited love in Vancouver.’ Whilst working as a store clerk in British Columbia, Service mentioned to a customer that he wrote poetry, and as a result, six of his poems on the Boer War appeared in the Colonist in July 1900. Throughout this peripatetic period, Service continued writing and saving his verses, and more than a third of the poems which made up his first volume had been written before he moved north in 1904. But it was in Whitehorse, a frontier town located on the Yukon River at the White Horse Rapids, that Service penned his most famous poems; The Shooting of Dam McGrew, The Cremation of Sam McGee and The Call of the Wild. All of these works detailed the local people and countryside; drawn from events he witnessed himself as well as local conversations and gossip. After having collected enough poems for a book, Service sent the collection to his father, who had emigrated to Toronto, and asked him to find a printing house to duplicate them in booklet form.  The poems were so popular however, that his cheque was returned along with a contract offering ten percent royalties for the book. This book became Songs of a Sourdough, and was such a success that it went through seven printings even before its official release date. In 1908, the bank Robert Service worked for transferred him to the town of Dawson, where he met and talked with the veterans of the Gold Rush. He used their tales to write his second book of verse, Ballads of a Cheechako, published later that year. This too was a great success. After this, Service served as a correspondent for the Toronto Star during the Balkan Wars, later moving to Paris in 1913, where he spent the great majority of the rest of his life. It was here that he married Germaine Bourgoin, a daughter of a distillery owner, with whom he purchased a summer home at Lancieux, Cotes-D’Armor, in the Brittany region of France. In his early forties, on the outbreak of World War One, Service attempted to enlist in the army, but was turned down on health grounds. He eventually served as a stretcher bearer and ambulance driver with the American Red Cross, and was honoured by three medals for his war engagement: the 1914–15 Star, British War Medal and the Victory Medal. Service continued his military work as long as his health permitted, moving back to Paris in order to convalesce. It was during this time that he penned his book of war poetry, Rhymes of a Red Cross Man (1916). Throughout the 1920s, Service continued writing, most notably his thriller novels; The Poisoned Paradise, A Romance of Monte Carlo (1922) and The Roughneck, A Tale of Tahiti (1923). He travelled widely during the 1930s, to Germany and the USSR, but fled to Canada on the outbreak of the Second World War. During the conflict years he toured US Army camps, reciting his poems in order to boost morale. After the war, Service and his wife returned to his home in Brittany, to find it destroyed. He remained a prolific writer however, and published six books of verse from 1949-55. They rebuilt, and he lived there until his death on 11 September 1958. Service has since been honoured with a Canadian postage stamp, various schools, bridges and streets named in his honour – in France as well as Canada, and a bust in his likeness, erected in the town of Whitehorse.

BALLADS OF A BOHEMIAN

Prelude

Alas! upon some starry height,

The Gods of Excellence to please,

This hand of mine will never smite

The Harp of High Serenities.

Mere minstrel of the street am I,

To whom a careless coin you fling;

But who, beneath the bitter sky,

Blue-lipped, yet insolent of eye,

Can shrill a song of Spring;

A song of merry mansard days,

The cheery chimney-tops among;

Of rolics and of roundelays

When we were young . . . when we were young;

A song of love and lilac nights,

Of wit, of wisdom and of wine;

Of Folly whirling on the Heights,

Of hunger and of hope divine;

Of Blanche, Suzette and Celestine,

And all that gay and tender band

Who shared with us the fat, the lean,

The hazard of Illusion-land;

When scores of Philistines we slew

As mightily with brush and pen

We sought to make the world anew,

And scorned the gods of other men;

When we were fools divinely wise,

Who held it rapturous to strive;

When Art was sacred in our eyes,

And it was Heav’n to be alive. . . .

O days of glamor, glory, truth,

To you to-night I raise my glass;

O freehold of immortal youth,

Bohemia, the lost, alas!

O laughing lads who led the romp,

Respectable you’ve grown, I’m told;

Your heads you bow to power and pomp,

You’ve learned to know the worth of gold.

O merry maids who shared our cheer,

Your eyes are dim, your locks are gray;

And as you scrub I sadly fear

Your daughters speed the dance to-day.

O windmill land and crescent moon!

O Columbine and Pierrette!

To you my old guitar I tune

Ere I forget, ere I forget. . . .

So come, good men who toil and tire,

Who smoke and sip the kindly cup,

Ring round about the tavern fire

Ere yet you drink your liquor up;

And hear my simple songs of earth,

Of youth and truth and living things;

Of poverty and proper mirth,

Of rags and rich imaginings;

Of cock-a-hoop, blue-heavened days,

Of hearts elate and eager breath,

Of wonder, worship, pity, praise,

Of sorrow, sacrifice and death;

Of lusting, laughter, passion, pain,

Of lights that lure and dreams that thrall . . .

And if a golden word I gain,

Oh, kindly folks, God save you all!

And if you shake your heads in blame . . .

Good friends, God love you all the same.

BOOK ONE ~~ SPRING

I

Montparnasse,

April 1914.

All day the sun has shone into my little attic, a bitter sunshine that brightened yet did not warm. And so as I toiled and toiled doggedly enough, many were the looks I cast at the three faggots I had saved to cook my evening meal. Now, however, my supper is over, my pipe alight, and as I stretch my legs before the embers I have at last a glow of comfort, a glimpse of peace.

My Garret

Here is my Garret up five flights of stairs;

Here’s where I deal in dreams and ply in fancies,

Here is the wonder-shop of all my wares,

My sounding sonnets and my red romances.

Here’s where I challenge Fate and ring my rhymes,

And grope at glory—aye, and starve at times.

Here is my Stronghold:stout of heart am I,

Greeting each dawn as songful as a linnet;

And when at night on yon poor bed I lie

(Blessing the world and every soul that’s in it),

Here’s where I thank the Lord no shadow bars

My skylight’s vision of the valiant stars.

Here is my Palace tapestried with dreams.

Ah! though to-night ten sous are all my treasure,

While in my gaze immortal beauty gleams,

Am I not dowered with wealth beyond all measure?

Though in my ragged coat my songs I sing,

King of my soul, I envy not the king.

Here is my Haven:it’s so quiet here;

Only the scratch of pen, the candle’s flutter;

Shabby and bare and small, but O how dear!

Mark you—my table with my work a-clutter,

My shelf of tattered books along the wall,

My bed, my broken chair—that’s nearly all.

Only four faded walls, yet mine, all mine.

Oh, you fine folks, a pauper scorns your pity.

Look, where above me stars of rapture shine;

See, where below me gleams the siren city . . .

Am I not rich?—a millionaire no less,

If wealth be told in terms of Happiness.

Ten sous. . . . I think one can sing best of poverty when one is holding it at arm’s length. I’m sure that when I wrote these lines, fortune had for a moment tweaked me by the nose. To-night, however, I am truly down to ten sous. It is for that I have stayed in my room all day, rolled in my blankets and clutching my pen with clammy fingers. I must work, work, work. I must finish my book before poverty crushes me. I am not only writing for my living but for my life. Even to-day my Muse was mutinous. For hours and hours anxiously I stared at a paper that was blank; nervously I paced up and down my garret; bitterly I flung myself on my bed. Then suddenly it all came. Line after line I wrote with hardly a halt. So I made another of my Ballads of the Boulevards. Here it is:

Julot the Apache

You’ve heard of Julot the apache, and Gigolette, his môme. . . .

Montmartre was their hunting-ground, but Belville was their home.

A little chap just like a boy, with smudgy black mustache,—

Yet there was nothing juvenile in Julot the apache.

From head to heel as tough as steel, as nimble as a cat,

With every trick of twist and kick, a master of savate.

And Gigolette was