Robert W. Service

Ballads of a Bohemian (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

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.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: CAIMAN
• Erscheinungstermin: 20. Juni 2019
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9788834145630
• Artikelnr.: 59128351

Autorenporträt

Robert William Service, known as "the Bard of the Yukon," was a British-Canadian poet and author who lived from January 16, 1874, to September 11, 1958. William was given as a middle name in memory of a wealthy uncle. The middle name was deleted by Service after his uncle failed to provide provisions for him in his will. He was a bank clerk by trade, having been born in Lancashire of Scottish origin, but he also spent a lot of time traveling, frequently in extreme poverty, across the west of the United States and Canada. When his bank sent him to the Yukon, he was moved by stories of the Klondike Gold Rush and inspired to write two poems, "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee," which displayed a remarkable level of authenticity for a writer without any prior experience with gold mining and quickly gained popularity. Encouraged by this, he rapidly produced further songs on the same subject, which were later collected in Songs of a Sourdough (known in the United States as The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses) and sold in large quantities. When his subsequent collection Ballads of a Cheechako achieved the same level of success, Service was able to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle based in Paris and the French Riviera while traveling frequently.