"You are gossamer-winged, little brother of mine,
Tissue winged, like the mist
That broods where the marshes melt into a line
Of vapour sun-kissed.
"You are laden with sweets, little brother of mine,
Flower sweets, like the touch
Of hands we have longed for, of arms that entwine,
Of lips that love much.
"You are better than I, little brother of mine,
Than I, human-souled,
For you bring from the blossoms and red summer shine,
For others, your gold."
The poet has no country save that of the kingdom of song, or rather, all countries are his own, and while Canada cannot claim Robert W. Service by birth, it is he who has so made himself the poet of her scenic grandeur and her primitive human experiences in the deepest emotions of life, love, death, sacrifice, revenge, that no sketch of Canadian poetry could omit the name of one who has made the Dominion known, in its grandeur and its mountain solitudes, the world over. Mr. Service has inevitably been much quoted in these pages; no one can travel in Canada, no one can write of Canada, without this perpetual consciousness of the vivid way in which he has translated her landscapes and her life. What a ring of the vitality that conquers the wilderness is in his Call of the Wild!
"Have you suffered, starved, and triumphed, grovelled 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 splendours, 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."
In The Law of the Yukon we find:
"This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain;
'Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and
your sane;
Strong for the red rage of battle; sane, for I harry them sore;
Send me men girt for the combat,—men who are grit to the core;
Send me the best of your breeding, lend me your chosen ones;
Them will I take to my bosom, them will I call my sons;
Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat;
But the others, the misfits, the failures,—I trample under my feet.
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