More Fun, More Service

 

1. Oh dear, Drew has invoked poetry. Well, I just don’t fit in, do I?

   The Men Who Don’t Fit In*

   Robert W. Service

   There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,
   A race that can’t stay still;
   So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
   And they roam the world at will.
   They range the field and they rove the flood,
   And they climb the mountain’s crest;
   Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
   And they don’t know how to rest.

   If they just went straight they might go far;
   They are strong and brave and true;
   But they’re always tired of the things that are,
   And they want the strange and new.
   They say: “Could I find my proper groove,
   What a deep mark I would make!”
   So they chop and change, and each fresh move
   Is only a fresh mistake.

   And each forgets, as he strips and runs
   With a brilliant, fitful pace,
   It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones
   Who win in the lifelong race.
   And each forgets that his youth has fled,
   Forgets that his prime is past,
   Till he stands one day, with a hope that’s dead,
   In the glare of the truth at last.

   He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
   He has just done things by half.
   Life’s been a jolly good joke on him,
   And now is the time to laugh.
   Ha, ha!  He is one of the Legion Lost;
   He was never meant to win;
   He’s a rolling stone, and it’s bred in the bone;
   He’s a man who won’t fit in.

   .

   Nope, I didn’t fit in even when I visited Anchorage and discovered Robert W. Service.

   I don’t quite fit in on BMEWS.

   Hell, I don’t fit in on my personal blog

   This is my favorite Service poem.

   Posted by Christopher       10/25/2008  at  02:06 AM  

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