"'I am the land that listens, I am the land that broods;
Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods.
Monstrous, moody, pathetic, the last of the lands and the first,
Visioning campfires at twilight, sad with a longing forlorn.'
* * * * * * * *
"This is the law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive;
That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive;
Dissolute, damned, and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,
This is the law of Will of the Yukon,—Lo, how she makes it plain!"
Robert Service has many moods, and in the tender little lyric Unforgotten he dramatises the way in which one's real life lies in his consciousness rather than enchained with the bodily presence:
"I know a garden where the lilies gleam,
And one who lingers in the sunshine there;
She is than white-stoled lily far more fair.
And oh, her eyes are heaven-lit with dream.
"I know a garret, cold and dark and drear,
And one who toils and toils with tireless pen,
Until his brave, sad eyes grow weary—then
He seeks the stars, pale, silent as a seer.
"And ah, it's strange, for desolate and dim
Between these two there rolls an ocean wide;
Yet he is in the garden by her side
And she is in the garret there with him."
One of the wonderful poems of Mr. Service is that of My Madonna. The artist "haled" him "a woman from the street" for his model; he painted her:
"I painted her as she might have been
If the Worst had been the Best,"