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Ottawa Folk Festival Robert Service Collection

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<h2> The Pines </h2> We sleep in the sleep of ages, the bleak, barbarian pines; The gray moss drapes us like sages, and closer we lock our lines, And deeper we clutch through the gelid gloom where never a sunbeam shines. On the flanks of the storm-gored ridges are our black battalions massed; We surge in a host to the sullen coast, and we sing in the ocean blast; From empire of sea to empire of snow we grip our empire fast. To the niggard lands were we driven, 'twixt desert and floes are we penned; To us was the Northland given, ours to stronghold and defend; Ours till the world be riven in the crash of the utter end; Ours from the bleak beginning, through the aeons of death-like sleep; Ours from the shock when the naked rock was hurled from the hissing deep; Ours through the twilight ages of weary glacier creep. Wind of the East, Wind of the West, wandering to and fro, Chant your songs in our topmost boughs, that the sons of men may know The peerless pine was the first to come, and the pine will be last to go! We pillar the halls of perfumed gloom; we plume where the eagles soar; The North-wind swoops from the brooding Pole, and our ancients crash and roar; But where one falls from the crumbling walls shoots up a hardy score. We spring from the gloom of the canyon's womb; in the valley's lap we lie; From the white foam-fringe, where the breakers cringe to the peaks that tusk the sky, We climb, and we peer in the crag-locked mere that gleams like a golden eye. Gain to the verge of the hog-back ridge where the vision ranges free: Pines and pines and the shadow of pines as far as the eye can see; A steadfast legion of stalwart knights in dominant empery. Sun, moon and stars give answer; shall we not staunchly stand, Even as now, forever, wards of the wilder strand, Sentinels of the stillness, lords of the last, lone land? <h2> The Lure of Little Voices </h2> There's a cry from out the loneliness — oh, listen, Honey, listen! Do you hear it, do you fear it, you're a-holding of me so? You're a-sobbing in your sleep, dear, and your lashes, how they glisten — Do you hear the Little Voices all a-begging me to go? All a-begging me to leave you. Day and night they're pleading, praying, On the North-wind, on the West-wind, from the peak and from the plain; Night and day they never leave me — do you know what they are saying? "He was ours before you got him, and we want him once again." Yes, they're wanting me, they're haunting me, the awful lonely places; They're whining and they're whimpering as if each had a soul; They're calling from the wilderness, the vast and God-like spaces, The stark and sullen solitudes that sentinel the Pole. They miss my little camp-fires, ever brightly, bravely gleaming In the womb of desolation, where was never man before; As comradeless I sought them, lion-hearted, loving, dreaming, And they hailed me as a comrade, and they loved me evermore. And now they're all a-crying, and it's no use me denying; The spell of them is on me and I'm helpless as a child; My heart is aching, aching, but I hear them, sleeping, waking; It's the Lure of Little Voices, it's the mandate of the Wild. I'm afraid to tell you, Honey, I can take no bitter leaving; But softly in the sleep-time from your love I'll steal away. Oh, it's cruel, dearie, cruel, and it's God knows how I'm grieving; But His loneliness is calling, and He knows I must obey. <h2> The Song of the Wage-Slave </h2> When the long, long day is over, and the Big Boss gives me my pay, I hope that it won't be hell-fire, as some of the parsons say. And I hope that it won't be heaven, with some of the parsons I've met — All I want is just quiet, just to rest and forget. Look at my face, toil-furrowed; look at my calloused hands; Master, I've done Thy bidding, wrought in Thy many lands — Wrought for the little masters, big-bellied they be, and rich; I've done their desire for a daily hire, and I die like a dog in a ditch. I have used the strength Thou hast given, Thou knowest I did not shirk; Threescore years of labor — Thine be the long day's work. And now, Big Master, I'm broken and bent and twisted and scarred, But I've held my job, and Thou knowest, and Thou will not judge me hard. Thou knowest my sins are many, and often I've played the fool — Whiskey and cards and women, they made me the devil's tool. I was just like a child with money; I flung it away with a curse, Feasting a fawning parasite, or glutting a harlot's purse; Then back to the woods repentant, back to the mill or the mine, I, the worker of workers, everything in my line. Everything hard but headwork (I'd no more brains than a kid), A brute with brute strength to labor, doing as I was bid; Living in camps with men-folk, a lonely and loveless life; Never knew kiss of sweetheart, never caress of wife. A brute with brute strength to labor, and they were so far above — Yet I'd gladly have gone to the gallows for one little look of Love. I, with the strength of two men, savage and shy and wild — Yet how I'd ha' treasured a woman, and the sweet, warm kiss of a child! Well, 'tis Thy world, and Thou knowest. I blaspheme and my ways be rude; But I've lived my life as I found it, and I've done my best to be good; I, the primitive toiler, half naked and grimed to the eyes, Sweating it deep in their ditches, swining it stark in their styes; Hurling down forests before me, spanning tumultuous streams; Down in the ditch building o'er me palaces fairer than dreams; Boring the rock to the ore-bed, driving the road through the fen, Resolute, dumb, uncomplaining, a man in a world of men. Master, I've filled my contract, wrought in Thy many lands; Not by my sins wilt Thou judge me, but by the work of my hands. Master, I've done Thy bidding, and the light is low in the west, And the long, long shift is over... Master, I've earned it — Rest. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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