Robert William Service Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old Robert William Service quotes, Robert William Service sayings, and Robert William Service proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.'

A failing for profanity / So to delight the dears I try, / And often in the past / In fabricating sonnets I / Have fulminated: 'Blast!' Robert William Service
He festered in a Marseilles slum, / A starving genius, god-inspired. / You'd take him for a lousy bum, / Tho' poetry of paint he lyred, / In dreamy pastels each a gem: . . . / How people laughed at them! Robert William Service
Oh sure I could go on — but gee! it's rough / To be a pork-and-beaner at the best; / To beg for bouts, yet getting not enough / To keep a decent feed inside my vest; / To go on canvas-kissing till I come / To cadge for drinks just like a Bowery bum. Robert William Service
My brother is a man of weight; / For every civic plum / He grabs within one pie of state, / While I am just a bum. Robert William Service
Slouching along in smelly rags, a bleary-eyed, no-good bum; / A knight of the hollow needle, pard, spewed from the sodden slum. Robert William Service
When I was brash and gallant-gay / Just fifty years ago, / I hit the ties and beat my way / From Maine to Mexico; / For though to Glasgow gutter bred / A hobo heart had I, / And followed where adventure led, / Beneath a brazen sky. Robert William Service
You know that old and withered man, that derelict of art, / Who for a paltry franc will make a crayon sketch of you? / In slouching hat and shabby cloak he looks and is the part, / A sodden old Bohemian, without a single sou. Robert William Service
Gather around me, children dear; / The wind is high and the night is cold; / Closer, little ones, snuggle near; / Let's seek a story of ages old; / A magic tale of a bygone day, / Of lovely ladies and dragons dread; / Come, for you're all so tired of play, / We'll read till it's time to go to bed. Robert William Service
Toil's a tunnel, there's no way out / For fellows, the like of' me; / A beggar wi' only a crust an' a clout / At the worst o' the worst is free; / but I work to eat, an' I eat to work; / It's always the same old round, / And I dassent fail for the day I shirk / They'll shovel me underground. Robert William Service
A smiling little orchard and a big potato patch. Robert William Service
A skinny, starving stray; it looked so pitifully small, a fluff of silver grey. Robert William Service
To see the skinny hag in black who boosts you up the curb. Robert William Service
Some poet chap had labelled man the noblest work of God: / I see myself a charlatan, a humbug and a fraud. / Yea, 'spite of show and shallow wit, an sentimental drool, / I know myself a hypocrite, a coward and a fool. Robert William Service
I watched them in a bleary daze of bitterness and pain, / For oh, I missed the cheery blaze of vodka in my brain. Robert William Service
Each sunny day upon my way / A goat I pass / He has a beard of silver grey / A bell of brass. Robert William Service
Alas! though bards make verse sublime / And lines to quote / It takes a fool like me to rhyme / About a goat. Robert William Service
Pines against the sky, / Pluming the purple hill; / Pines . . . and I wonder why, / Heart, you quicken and thrill? / Wistful heart of a boy, / Fill with a strange sweet joy, / Lifting to Heaven nigh - / Pines against the sky. Robert William Service
Trees, trees against the sky - / O I have loved them well! / There are pleasures you cannot buy, / Treasurers you cannot sell, / And not the smallest of these / Is the gift and glory of trees. . . Robert William Service
My Boss keeps sporty girls, they say; His belly's big with cheer. Robert William Service
Sitting in the dentist's chair / Wishing that I wasn't there / To forget and pass the time / I have made this bit of rhyme. Robert William Service
My dentist had a powerful wrist / He tries and tries in vain / To make me grunt or groan or squeal / With probe or rasp or drill. Robert William Service
Sitting in the dental chair / Don't you wish you weren't there / Well, your cup of woe to fill / Just think of his infernal bill. Robert William Service
I have no brief for gambling, nay / The notion I express / That money earned 's the only way / To pay for happiness. / With cards and dice I do not hold; / By betting I've been bit: / Conclusion: to get honest gold / You've got to sweat for it. Robert William Service
We are wild as colts unbroke, but never mean. / Of our sins we've shoulders broad to bear the blame; / But we'll never stay in town and we'll never settle down, / And we'll never have an object or an aim. Robert William Service
Oh, it is good afar to roam, / And seek adventure in strange lands; / Yet oh, so good the coming home, / The velvet love of little hands. Robert William Service
I love the cheery bustle / Of children round the house, / The tidy maids a-hustle, / The chatter of my spouse; / The laughter and the singing, / The joy on every face: / With frequent laughter ringing, / O, Home's a happy place! Robert William Service
His crowded life of God's good giving / No man has relished more than I; / I've been so goldarned busy living / I've never had the time to die. / So busy fishing, hunting, roving, / Up on my toes and fighting fit; / So busy singing, laughing, loving, / I've never had the time to quit. Robert William Service
So feathered friend, until the end you may divide my den, / And make a mess, which (more or less) I clean up now and then. / But I prefer the doom to share of dead and gone compeers, / Than parrot be, and live to see ten times a hundred years. Robert William Service
Carefree to be, as a bird that sings; / To go my own sweet way; / To reck not at all what may befall, / But to live and to love each day. Robert William Service
Why should I be the first to fall / Of all the leaves on this old tree? / Though sadly soon I know that all / Will lose their hold and follow me. / While my birth-brothers bravely blow, / Why should I be first to go? Robert William Service