Poetry Friday

There is only one poem that I can quote from start to finish without issue. One of my father's favorite poems was The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service, which has to be one of the funniest poems about death ever written. All of us kids (and I mean all) know the poem and most of us can recite the opening stanza. But I read Cremation and then went on to read more Service. And fell in love with his poetry. All of it. His most famous stuff is set in the Yukon Territory. The Shooting of Dan McGrue, The Spell of the Yukon, and of course Cremation. But he also wrote in Paris and during World War I. Cremation was too long but click on the link and read it. The ending is worth it.

Here is my other favorite poem by Robert Service, The Men Who Don't Fit In. I can recite this one at will.

The Men That Don't Fit In

There's a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.

They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they're always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.

They say: "Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!"
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.

And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life's been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.

Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;
He's a man who won't fit in.