My rhymes are rough, and often in my rhyming <br /> I've drifted, silver-sailed, on seas of dream, <br />Hearing afar the bells of Elfland chiming, <br /> Seeing the groves of Arcadie agleam. <br /> <br />I was the thrall of Beauty that rejoices <br /> From peak snow-diademed to regal star; <br />Yet to mine aerie ever pierced the voices, <br /> The pregnant voices of the Things That Are. <br /> <br />The Here, the Now, the vast Forlorn around us; <br /> The gold-delirium, the ferine strife; <br />The lusts that lure us on, the hates that hound us; <br /> Our red rags in the patch-work quilt of Life. <br /> <br />The nameless men who nameless rivers travel, <br /> And in strange valleys greet strange deaths alone; <br />The grim, intrepid ones who would unravel <br /> The mysteries that shroud the Polar Zone. <br /> <br />These will I sing, and if one of you linger <br /> Over my pages in the Long, Long Night, <br />And on some lone line lay a calloused finger, <br /> Saying: "Lo! It's human-true--it hits me right"; <br />Then will I count this loving toil well spent; <br />Then will I dream awhile--content, content.<br /><br />Robert William Service<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-the-man-of-the-high-north/
