 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Kristen Hughes. Ballads of a Bohemian by Robert W. Service. Book 2. Early Summer. Part 4. The Cafe de Du Mago. June 1914. The Bohemian. Up in my garret bleak and bare I tilted back on my broken chair, and my three old pals were with me there, hunger and thirst and cold. Hunger howled at his scurvy mate, cold cowered down by the hallow great, and I hated them with a deadly hate as old as life is old. So up in my garret that's near the sky I smiled a smile that was thin and dry. You've roomed with me for twenty years, said I, hunger and thirst and cold. But now be gone down the broken stair, I've suffered enough of your spite, so there. Bang bang I slapped on the table-bear a glittering heap of gold. Red flames will jewel my wine to-night, I'll loose my belt that you've lugged so tight. Ha-ha! Dame Fortune is smiling bright, the stuff of my brain I've sold. Can I of the gutter, up, away, you've battened on me for a bitter long day, but I'm driving you forth and for ever and I, hunger and thirst and cold. So I've kicked them out with a scornful roar. Yet, oh, they turn at the garret door. Quietly there, they spoke once more. The tale is not all told. It's au revoir, but it's not goodbye. We're yours, old chap, till the day you die. Laugh on, you fool. Oh, you'll never defy a hunger and thirst and cold. Hurrah! The crisis in my financial career is over. Once more I have weathered the storm and never did money jingle so sweetly in my pocket. It was McBean who delivered me. He arrived at the door of my garret this morning, with a broad grin of pleasure on his face. Here, said he, I've sold some of your rubbish. They'll take more, two of the same sort. With that he handed me three crisp notes. For a moment I thought that he was paying the money out of his own pocket, as he knew I was desperately hard up. But he showed me the letter in closing the check he had cashed for me. So we sought the grand boulevard, and I had a panneau which rose to my head in delicious waves of joy. I talked ecstatic nonsense, and seemed to walk like a garden clouds of gold. We dined on frog's legs in Vouvre, and then went to see the review at the Magne, a very merry evening. Such is the life of Bohemia, up and down, fast and feast. It's very uncertainty, it's charm. Here is my latest ballad, another attempt to express the sentiment of actuality. The auction sale. Her little head just topped the windowsill. She, even mounted on a stool, maybe. She pressed against the pain as children will and watched us playing, oh so wistfully. And then I missed her for a month or more, and idly thought, she's gone away, no doubt. Until a hearse drew up beside the door, I saw a tiny coffin carried out. And after that, towards dusk I'd often see behind the blind another face that looked, eyes of a young wife watching anxiously, then rushing back to where her dinner cooked. She often gulped it down alone, I fear, within her heart the sadness of despair. For near to midnight I would vaguely hear a lurching step, a stumbling on the stair. These little dramas of the common day. A man, weak-willed, and foreordained to fail. The windows empty now, they've gone away, and yonder see their fanatures for sale. To all the world their door is open wide, and round and round the bargain-hunters roam, and peer and gloat, like vultures avid-eyed, above the corpse of what was once a home. So reverent I go from room to room, and see the patient care, the tender touch, the love that sought to brighten up the gloom, the woman courage tested over much. Amid those things so intimate and dear, where now the mob invades with brutal tread, I think, what happiness is buried here, what dreams are withered, and what hopes are dead. O woman dear, and were you sweet and glad over the lining of your little nest, what ponderings and proud ideas you had, what visions of a shrine of peace and rest. For there's his easy chair upon the rug, his reading-lamp, his pipe-rack on the wall, all that you could devise to make him snug, and yet you could not hold him with it all. Ah, patient heart, what home-like joys you planned to stay him by the dull domestic flame, those silken cushions that you worked by hand when you had time, before the baby came. Oh, how you wove around him cosy spells, and schemed so hard to keep him home of nights. I every touch and turn some story tells of sweet conspiracies and dead delights. And here, upon the scratched piano stool tied in a bundle, are the songs you sung, that cosy that you worked in coloured wool, the Spanish lace you made when you were young, and lots of modern marvels, cheap reprints, and little dainty knick-knacks everywhere, and silken bows and curtains of gay chints, and oh, her tiny crib, her folding chair. Sweet woman, dear, and did your heart not break to leave this precious home you made in vain? Poor shabby things, so prized for old times' sake, with all their memories of love and pain. Alas, while shouts the rocus auctioneer and rat-faced dames are prying everywhere, the echo of old joy is all I hear, all, all I see, just heartbreak and despair. Imagination is the great gift of the gods. Given it, one does not need to look afar for subjects. There is romance in every face. Those who have imagination live in a land of enchantment, which the eyes of others cannot see. Yet if it brings marvellous joy, it also brings exquisite pain. Who lives a hundred lives must die a hundred deaths. I do not know any of the people who live around me. Sometimes I pass them on the stairs. However, I am going to give my imagination rain and string some rhymes about them. Before doing so, having money in my pocket and seeing the prospect of making more, let me blithely chant about the joy of being poor. Let others sing of gold and gear, the joy of being rich, but oh, the days when I was poor, a vagrant in a ditch, when every dawn was like a gem, so radiant and rare, and I had but a single coat and not a single care. When I would feast right royally on bacon, bread and beer and dig into a stack of hay and doze like any pier, when I would wash beside a brook my solitary shirt, and though it dried upon my back I never took a hurt. When I went romping down the road contemptuous of care and slapped adventure on the back by God we were a pair. When though my pockets lacked a coin and though my coat was old, the largesse of the stars was mine and all the sunset gold. When time was only made for fools and free as air was I, and hard I hit and hard I lived beneath the open sky, when all the roads were one to me and each had its allure. Ye gods these were the happy days, the days when I was poor. Or else, again old pal of mine, do you recall the times you struggled with your storyettes? I wrestled with my rhymes. Oh, we were happy were we not. We used to live so high, a little bit of broken roof between us and the sky. Upon the forge of art we toiled with hammer and with tongs. You told me all your rippling yarns. I sang to you my songs. Our hats were frayed, our jackets patched, our boots were down at heel. But oh, the happy men we were, although we lacked a meal. And if I sold a bit of rhyme or if you placed a tale, what feasts we had of tenderloins and apple-tarts and ale, and yet how often we were dying as cheerful as you please, beside our little friendly fire on coffee, bread and cheese. We lived upon the ragged edge and grub was never sure. But oh, these were the happy days, the days when we were poor. Alas, old man, we're wealthy now, it's sad beyond a doubt. We cannot dodge prosperity, success has found us out. Your eye is very dull and drear. My brow is creased with care. We realise how hard it is to be a millionaire. The burden's heavy on our backs. You're thinking of your rents. I'm worrying if I'll invest in five or six per cent. We've limousines and marble halls and flunkies by the score. We play the part. But say, old chap, oh, isn't it a bore? We work like slaves, we eat too much, we put on evening-dress. We've everything a man can want, I think. But happiness. Come, let us sneak away, old chum, forget that we are rich and earn an honest appetite and scratch an honest itch. Let's be two jolly garateers, up seven flights of stairs and wear old clothes and just pretend we aren't millionaires. And wonder how we'll pay the rent and scribble ream on ream and sup on sausages and tea and laugh and loaf and dream. And when we're tired of that, my friend, oh, you will come with me and we will seek the sunlit roads that lie beside the sea. We'll know the joy the gypsy knows, the freedom nothing mars, the golden treasure gates of dawn, the mintage of the stars. We'll smoke our pipes and watch the pot and feed the crackling fire and sing like two old jolly boys and dance to heart's desire. We'll climb the hill and ford the brook and camp upon the moor. Old chap, let's haste. I'm mad to taste the joy of being poor. End of book two, early summer, part four. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Kristen Hughes. Ballads of a Bohemian. By Robert W. Service. Book two, early summer, part five. My Garrett, Montparnasse. June, 1914. My neighbors. To rest my fagged brain now and then, when worried of my proper labors, I lay aside my lagging pen and get to thinking on my neighbors. For oh, around my Garrett den there's woe and poverty aplenty, and life so interesting when a lad is only two and twenty. Now there's that artist gaunt and wan, a little card his door adorning. It reads, Je ne suis pour personne. A very frank and fitting warning. I fear he's in a sorry plight. I don't know what to say, but I think he's too proud to borrow. I hear him mourning every night. Maybe they'll find him dead to-morrow. Room four, the painter chap. He gives me such a bold and curious look that young American across the way, as if he'd like to put me in a book. Fancy's himself a poet, so they say. Ah, well. I lock my door, ha-ha, now none shall see. Pictures, just pictures piled from roof to floor. Each one a bit of me, a dream fulfilled. A vision of the beauty I adore. My own poor glimpse of glory, passion thrilled. But now my money's gone. I paint no more. For three days past I have not tasted food. The jeweled colours run. I reel, I faint. They tell me that my pictures are no good. Just crude and childish dobs. A waste of paint. I burn to throw on canvas all I saw. Twilight on water, tenderness of trees. Wet sands at sunset. And the smoking seas. The peace of valleys and the mountain's awe. Emotions swayed me at the thought of these. I sought to paint ere I had learned to draw. And that's the trouble. Ah, well. Here I am, facing my failure after struggle long. And there they are, my crude, that none will buy and doubtless they are right and I am wrong. Well, when one's lost one's faith it's time to die. This knife will do. And now to slash and slash, rip them to ribbons, rend them everyone. My dreams and visions tear and stab and gash so that their crudeness may be known to none. Poor miserable dobs. Ah, there it's done. And now to close my little window tight. Low in the dusking sky serenely set, the evening star is like a beacon bright. And see to keep a tender trist with night how Paris veils herself in violet. Oh, why does God create such men as I? All pride and passion and divine desire, raw quivering nerve stuff and devouring fire. For doom to failure, though they try and try, abortive, blindly to destruction hurled, unfound, unfit to grapple with the world. And now to light my wheezy jet of gas, chink up the window crannies in the door so that no single breath of air may pass, so that I'm sealed airtight from roof to floor. There, there that's done. And now there's nothing more. Look at the city's myriad lamps shine. See the calm moon is launching into space. There will be darkness in these eyes of mine ere it can climb to shine upon my face. Oh, it will find such peace upon my face. City of beauty I have loved you well. A laugh or two I've had, but many a sigh. I've run with you the scale from heaven to hell. Paris, I love you still. Goodbye. Goodbye. Thus it all ends, unhappily alas. It's time to sleep and now blow out the gas. Now there's that little middenette who goes to work each morning daily. I choose to call her Blythe Babette because she's always humming gaily. Though the goddess Comile Four may look on her with prim expression, it's Pagan Paris where you know the queen of virtues is discretion. Room Six The Little Workgirl Three gentlemen live close beside me, a painter of pictures bizarre, a poet whose virtues might guide me, a singer who plays the guitar, and there on my lintel is cupid. I leave my door open, and yet these gentlemen aren't they stupid? They never make love to Babette. I go to the shop every morning. I work with my needle and thread, silk, satin and velvet adorning, then luncheon on coffee and bread, then sewing and sewing till seven, or else if the order I get, I toil and I toil till eleven, and such is the day of Babette. It doesn't seem cheerful, I fancy. The wage is unthinkably small, and yet there is one thing I can say. I keep a bright face through it all. I chaff though my head may be aching, I sing a gay song to forget. I laugh though my heart may be breaking. It's all in the life of Babette. That gown, o my lady of leisure, you beg to be finished in haste. It gives you an exquisite pleasure. Your lovers remark on its taste. Yet, o the poor little white faces, the tense midnight toil and the fret, I fear that the foam of its laces is salted with the tears of Babette. It takes a brave heart to be cheery, with no gleam of hope in the sky. The future's so utterly dreary. I'm laughing in case I should cry. And if, where the gay lights are glowing, I dine with a man I have met, and snatch a bright moment, who's going to blame a poor little Babette? And you, friend, beyond all the telling, although you're an ocean away, your pictures they tell me are selling. You're married and settled, they say. Such happiness one wouldn't barter. Yet, o do you never regret the springtide, the roses, momatra, youth, poverty, love, and Babette? That blondehead chap across the way, with the sunny smile and the voice so mellow, sings in some cheap cabaret. Yet what a gay and charming fellow. His breath with garlic may be strong. What matters it? His laugh is jolly. His day he gives to sleep and song. His nights made up of song and folly. Room 5. The Concert Singer I'm one of these haphazard chaps who sits in cafes drinking. A most improper taste, perhaps. Yet pleasant to my thinking. For, oh, I hate discord and strife. I'm sadly weakly human. And I do think the best of life is wine and song and woman. Now, there's that youngster on my right who thinks himself a poet. And so he toils from mourn to night and vainly hopes to show it. And there's that dober on my left, within his chamber shrinking. He looks like one of hope bereft. He lives on air, I'm thinking. But me. I love the things that are. My heart is always merry. I laugh and tune my old guitar. Sing ho and hay down dairy. Oh, let them toil their lives away to gild the todry era. But I'll be gay while yet I may. Sing tira lyra lyra. I'm sure you know that picture well, a monk, all else unheeding, within a bear and gloomy cell a musty volume reading. While through the window you can see in sunny glade entrancing, with cap and bells beneath a tree, a jester dancing, dancing. Which is the fool and which the sage? I cannot quite discover. But you may look in learning's page and I'll be laughed as lover. For this our life is none too long and hearts were made for gladness. Let virtue lie in joy and song. The only sin be sadness. So let me troll the jolly air. Come what? Come will to-morrow. I'll be no cabotin of care. No souten air of sorrow. Let those who will indulge in strife to my most merry thinking the true philosophy of life is laughing, loving, drinking. And there's that weird and ghastly hag who walks head-bent with lips amutter with twitching hands and feet that drag and tattered skirts that sweep the gutter. An out-worn harlot lost to hope with staring eyes and hair that's hoary I hear her gibber dazed with dope. I often wonder what's her story. Room seven. The cocoa fiend. I look at no one me. I pass them on the stair, shadows. I don't see. Shadows everywhere. Taunting, taunting, staring, glaring shadows. I don't care. Once my room I gain, then my life begins. Shut the door on pain. How the devil grins. Grin with might and main. Grin and grin in vain. Here's where heaven begins. Cocaine. Cocaine. A whiff. That's the thing. How it makes me gay. Now I want to sing, leap, laugh, play. I've had my fling. Mistress of a king in my day. Just another snuff. Oh, the blessed stuff. How the wretched room rushes from my sight. Misery and gloom melt into delight. Fear and death and doom. Vanish in the night. No more cold and pain. I am young again. Beautiful again. Cocaine. Cocaine. Oh, I was made to be good. For a true man's love and a life that's sweet. Fire-side blessings and motherhood. Little ones playing round my feet. How it all unfolds like a magic screen. Tender and glowing and clear and glad. The wonderful mother I might have been. The beautiful children I might have had. Romping and laughing and shrill with glee. Oh, I see them now and I see them plain. Darlings, come nestle up close to me. You comfort me so and you're just cocaine. It's life that's all to blame. We can't do what we will. She robes us with her shame. She crowns us with her ill. I do not care because I see with bitter calm. Life made me what I was. Life makes me what I am. Could I throw back the years? It would all be the same. Hunger and cold and tears. Misery, fear and shame. And then the old refrain. Cocaine, cocaine. A love-child I. So here my mother came. Where she might live in peace with none to blame. And how she toiled. Harder than any slave. What courage. Patient. Hopeful, tender, brave. We had a little room at Lavalette. So small, so neat, so clean. I see it yet. Poor mother. Sewing. Sewing late at night. Her wasted face beside the candlelight. This Paris crushed her. How she used to sigh. As I watched her from my bed, I knew she saw red roofs against a primrose sky and glistening fields and apples dimmed with dew. Hard times we had. We counted every sue. We sewed sacks for a living. I was quick. Four busy hands to work instead of two. Oh, we were happy there. How she fell sick. My mother lay. Her face turned to the wall, and I, a girl of sixteen, fair and tall sat by her side, all stricken with despair, knelt by her bed and faltered out a prayer. A doctor's order on the table lay. Medicine for which, alas, I could not pay. Medicine to save her life. To soothe her pain. I sought for something I could sell in vain. All. All was gone. The room was cold and bare. Gone blankets and the cloak I used to wear. Bare floor and wall and cupboard. Every shelf. Nothing that I could sell except myself. I sought the street. I could not bear to hear my mother moaning there. I clutched the paper in my hand. It was hard. You cannot understand. I walked as martyr to the flame. Almost exalted in my shame. They turned who heard my voiceless cry. For sale, a virgin. Who will buy? And so myself I fiercely sold. And clutched the price. A piece of gold. Into a pharmacy I pressed. I took the paper from my breast. I gave my money how it gleamed. How precious to my eyes it seemed. And then I saw the chemist frown. Quick on the counter throw it down. Shake with an angry look his head. You'll read the oars bad, he said. Dazed. Crushed I went into the night. I clutched my gleaming coin so tight. No. No, I could not well believe that anyone could so deceive. I tried again and yet again contempt, suspicion and disdain. Always the same reply I had. Get out of this, your money's bad. Heartbroken to the room I crept. To mother's side. All still. She slept. I bent. I sought to raise her head. Oh God have pity. She was dead. That's how it all began. Said I, revenge is sweet. So in my guilty span I've ruined many a man. They've groveled at my feet. I've pity had for none. I've bled them. Everyone. Oh I've had interest for that worthless Louis-Dor. But now it's over. See I care for no one, me. Only at night sometimes in dreams. I hear the chimes of wedding bells. And see a woman without stain. With children at her knee. Ah, how you comfort me, cocaine. End of book two, early summer, part five. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Kristen Hughes. Ballads of a Bohemian by Robert W. Service. Book three, late summer, part one. The Omnium Bar, near the Boers. Late July, 1914. McBean, before he settled down to the manufacture of mercantile fiction, had ideas of a nobler sort which bore their fruits in a slender book of poems. In subject they are either erotic, mythologic, or descriptive of nature. So polished are they that the mind seems to slide over them. So faultless in form, that the critics hailed them with highest praise. And as many as a hundred copies were sold. Saxon Dane, too, has published a book of poems. But he, on the other hand, defies tradition to an eccentric degree. Originality is his sin. He strains after it in every line. I must confess I think much of the free verse he writes is really prose. And a good deal of it blank verse chopped up into odd lengths. He talks of assonance and colour, of stress and pause and accent, and bewilders me with his theories. He and McBean represent two extremes. And at night, as we sit in the café du Dôme, they have the hottest of arguments. As for me, I listen with awe, content that my medium is verse, and that the fashions of hood, thackery, and Bret Hart are the fashions of today. Of late I have been doing light stuff, fillers for McBean. Here are three of my specimens. The Philanderer. Oh, have you forgotten those afternoons with riot of roses and amber skies when we thrilled the joy of a million dunes and I sought for your soul in the deeps of your eyes? I would love you, I promised, for ever and I. And I meant it too. Yet, oh, isn't it odd, when we met in the underground today I addressed you as Mary instead of as Maude. Oh, don't you remember that moonlit sea with us on a silver trail of float when I gracefully sank on my bended knee at the risk of upsetting our little boat? Oh, I vowed that my life was blighted then as friendship you proffered with mournful mean. But now, as I think of your children ten, I'm glad you refused me of Angeline. Oh, is that moment eternal still when I breathed my love in your shell-like ear and you plucked at your fan as a maiden-will and you blushed so charmingly, Guinevere. Like a worshipper at your feet I sat for a year and a day you made me mad. But now, alas, you are forty, fat and I think what a lucky escape I had. Oh, maidens, I've sat in a sacred shrine. Oh, Rosamond, Molly, and Mignonette, I've deemed you, in turn, the most divine. In turn you've broken my heart. And yet it's easily mended. What's past is past. Today on Lucy I'm going to call, for I'm sure that I know true love at last. And she is the fairest girl of all. The petit-view. Sew your wild oats in your youth, so we're always told. But I say with deeper soothe. Sew them when you're old. I'll be wise till I'm about seventy or so. Then, by God, I'll blossom out as an ancient bow. I'll assume a dashing air, laughing with loud ha-ha, how my grandchildren will stare at their grand-papa. Their perfection ori-ald I will scandalize. Won't I be a hori-ald sinner in their eyes? Watch me, how I'll learn to chaff barmaids in a bar. Scotches daily, gaily quaffed, puff a fierce cigar. I will haunt the tango teas at the stage-door stand, wait for dali dimple-knees bouquet in my hand. Then, at seventy, I'll take flutters at roulette, while at eighty, hope I'll make good at poker yet. And in fashionable togs to the races go, gayest of the gay old dogs, ninety years or so. Sew your wild oats while you're young, that's what you are told. Don't believe the foolish tongue, sew them when you're old. Till your three score years and ten, take my humble tip. Sew your nice tame oats and then, high-boy's letter rip, my masterpiece. It's slim and trim and bound in blue, its leaves are crisp and edged with gold, its words are simple, stalwart too, its thoughts are tender, wise and bold, its pages scintillate with wit, its pathos clutches at my throat. Oh, how I love each line of it, that little book I never wrote. In dreams I see it praised and prized by all from ploughmen unto peer, its pencil-marked and memorised, its loaned and not returned, I fear, its worn and torn and travel-tossed, and even dusky natives quote that classic that the world has lost. The little book I never wrote. Poor ghost, for homes you've failed to cheer, for grieving hearts uncomforted. Don't haunt me now. Alas, I fear the fire of inspiration's dead. A humdrum way I go to-night, from all I hoped and dreamed remote. Too late. A better man must write, that little book I never wrote. Talking about writing books, there is a queer character who shuffles up and down the little streets that neighbour the plasma bear. And who, they say, has been engaged on one for years. Sometimes I see him cowering in some cheap bourge, and his wild eyes gleam at me through the tangle of his hair. But I do not think he ever sees me. He mumbles to himself and moves like a man in a dream. His pockets are full of filthy paper on which he writes from time to time. The students laugh at him and make him tipsy. The street boys pelt him with ordeur. The better cafes turn him from their doors. But who knows? At least this is how I see him. My book. Before I drink myself to death, God let me finish up my book. At night I fear I fight for breath, and wake up whiter than a spook, and crawl off to a bistro near and drink until my brain is clear. Rare absinthe. Oh, it gives me strength to write and write. And so I spend day after day until at length with joy and pain I'll write the end. Then let this carcass rot. I give the world my book. My book will live. For every line is tense with truth. There's hope and joy on every page. A cheer, a clarion call to youth. A hymn, a comforter to age. All's there that I was meant to be. My part divine. The God in me. It's of my life the golden sum. Ah, who that reads this book of mine in stormy centuries to come will dream I rooted with the swine. Behold, I give mankind my best. What does it matter, all the rest? It's this that makes sublime my day. It's this that makes me struggle on. Oh, let them mark my mortal clay. My spirit's deathless as the dawn. Oh, let them shudder as they look. I'll be immortal in my book. And so beside the sullen sane I fight with dogs for filthy food. Yet know that from my sin and pain will sore serene a something good. Exultantly from shame and wrong, a right, a glory, and a song. How charming it is, this Paris of the summer skies. Each morning I leap up with joy in my heart, all eager to begin the day of work. As I eat my breakfast and smoke my pipe, I ponder over my task. Then, in the golden sunshine that floods my little attic, I pace up and down, absorbed and forgetful of the world. As I compose, I speak the words aloud. There are difficulties to overcome, thoughts that will not fit their mould, rebellious rhymes. Ah, those moments of despair and defeat. Then suddenly the mind grows lucid, imagination glows, the snarl unravels. In the end is always triumph and success. Oh, delectable Metier, who would not be a rhymesmith in Paris, in Bohemia, in the heart of youth. I have now finished my twentieth ballad, five more and they will be done. In quiet corners of cafes, on benches of the Luxembourg, on sunny caves I read them over one by one. Here is my latest, my hour, day after day behold me plying my pen within an office drear, the dullest dog till homeward highing, then lo, I reign a king of cheer, a throne have I of padded leather, a little court of kiddies three, a wife who smiles what air the weather, a feast of muffins, jam and tea. The table cleared a romping battle, a fairy tale, a children bed, a kiss, a hug, a hush of prattle. God save each little drowsy head, a cozy chat with wife assowing, a silver lining clouds that lower, then she too goes and with her going, I come again into my hour. I poke the fire, I snugly settle, my pipe I prime with proper care, the waters purring in the kettle, rum, lemon, sugar, all are there, and now the honest grog is steaming, and now the trusting briars glow, alas, in smoking, drinking, dreaming, how sadly swift the moments go. O golden hour twix the love and duty, all others I to others give, but you are mine to yield to beauty, to glean romance, to greatly live. For in my easy chair reclining I feel the sting of ocean spray, and yonder wondrously are shining the magic aisles of far away. Beyond the comas crashing thunder strange beaches flash into my ken, on jetties heaped head high with plunder, I dance and dice with sailor men, strange stars swarm down to burn above me, strange shadows haunt, strange voices greet, strange women lure and laugh and love me, and fling their bastards at my feet. Oh, I would wish the wide world over in ports of passion and unrest to drink and drain a tarry rover with dragons tattooed on my chest, with haunted eyes that hold red glories, a foaming seas and crashing shores, with lips that tell the strangest stories of sunken ships and gold madores. Till sick of storm and strife and slaughter some ghostly night when hides the moon I slip into the milk warm water and softly swim the stale lagoon. Then through some jungle, python haunted, or plumed morass or woodland wild I win my way with heart undaunted and all the wonder of a child. The pathless plains shall swoon around me, the forest frown, the floods appall, the mountains tiptoe to confound me, the rivers roar to speed my fall, wild doom shall daunt and dawns be gory and death shall sit beside my knee, till after terror torment glory I win again the sea, the sea. Oh anguish sweet, oh triumph splendid, oh dreams adieu, my pipe is dead, my glass is dry, my hour is ended. It's time indeed I stole to bed. How peacefully the house is sleeping. Ah, why should I strange fortunes plan to guard the dear ones in my keeping? That's task enough for any man. So through dim seas I'll nergos spoiling the red tortugas never roam. Please God I'll keep the pot a-boiling and make at least a happy home. My children's path shall gleam with roses, their grace abound, their joy increase. And so my hour divinely closes with tender thoughts of praise and peace. End of book three, late summer part one. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Kristen Hughes. Ballads of a Bohemian by Robert W. Service. Book three, late summer part two. The Garden of the Luxembourg, late July, 1914. When on some scintillating summer morning I leap lightly up to this occlusion of my garret, I often think of those lines in the brave days when I was twenty-one. True, I have no loving kind Lisette to pin her petticoat across the pain. Yet I do live in hope. Am I not in Bohemia the magical? Bohemia of Mugee? Of Demusette? Of Verlaine? Shades of Mimi-Pinson? Of Trilby? Of all that mortal line of laughterful grizzette? Do not tell me that the days of love and fun are forever at an end. Yes, youth is golden, but what of age? Shall it too not testify to the rhapsody of existence? Let the years between those of struggle, of sufferance, of disillusion, if you will. But let youth and age affirm the ecstasy of being. Let us look forward all to a serene sunset and in the still skies a late lark singing. This thought comes to me as sitting on a bench near the bandstand. I see an old savant who talks to all the children. His clean shaven face is alive with kindliness. Under his tall silk hat his white hair falls to his shoulders. He wears a long black cape over a black frock coat, very neat linen, and a flowing tie of black silk. I call him Sylvester Bernard. As I look at him I truly think the best of life are the years between sixty and seventy. A song of sixty-five. Brave Thackeray has trolled of days when he was twenty-one and bounded up five flights of stairs, a gallant gereteer, and yet, again in mellow vein, when youth was gaily run, has dipped his nose in gas-con wine and told of forty-year. But if I worthy were to sing a richer, rarer time, I'd tune my pipes before the fire and merrily I'd strive to praise that age when prose again has given way to rhyme, the Indian summer days of life when I'll be sixty-five. For then my work will all be done, my voyaging be passed, and I'll have earned the right to rest where folding hills are green. So in some glassy anchorage I'll make my cabin fast. Oh, let the seas show all their teeth, I'll sit and smile serene. The storm may bellow round the roof, I'll bide beside the fire, and many a scene of sail and trail within the flames I'll see, for I'll have worn away the spur of passion and desire. Oh, yes, when I am sixty-five, what peace will come to me? I'll take my breakfast in my bed, I'll rise at half-past ten, when all the world is nicely groomed and full of golden song, I'll smoke a bit and joke a bit, and read the news, and then I'll pot around my peach trees till I hear the luncheon gong. And after that I think I'll doze an hour, well, maybe two, and then I'll show some kindred soul how well my roses thrive. I'll do the things I never yet have found the time to do. Oh, won't I be the busy man when I am sixty-five? I'll revel in my library, I'll read De Morgan's books, I'll grow so garrulous I fear you'll write me down a bore, I'll watch the ways of ants and bees in quiet sunny nooks. I'll understand creation as I never did before. When gossips round the tea-cups talk, I'll listen to it all. On smiling days some kindly friend will take me for a drive. I'll own a shaggy collie-dog that dashes to my call, I'll celebrate my second youth when I am sixty-five. Ah, though I have twenty years to go, I see myself quite plain, a wrinkling, twinkling, rosy-cheeked, benevolent old chap. I think I'll wear a tartan shawl and lean upon a cane. I hope that I'll have silver hair beneath a velvet cap. I see my little grandchildren a-romping round my knee. So gay the scene, I almost wish to had hastened to arrive. Let others sing of youth in spring. Still will it seem to me the golden times the olden time, some time round sixty-five. From old men to children is but a step. And there, too, in the shadow of the Fontaine de Medici I spent much of my time watching the little ones. Childhood, so innocent, so helpless, so trusting, is somehow pathetic to me. There was one jolly little chap who used to play with a large white teddy bear. He was always with his mother, a sweet-faced woman, who followed his every move with delight. I used to watch them both and often spoke a few words. Then one day I missed them and it struck me I had not seen them for a week, even a month, maybe. After that I looked for them a time or two and soon forgot. Then, this morning, I saw the mother in the rue de Sasse. She was alone and in deep black. I wanted to ask after the boy, but there was a look in her face that stopped me. I do not think she will ever enter the garden of the Luxembourg again. Teddy bear. Oh, teddy bear, with your head awry and your comical twisted smile, you rub your eyes. Do you wonder why you've slept such a long, long while? As you lay so still in the cupboard dim and you heard on the roof the rain, were you thinking what has become of him and when will he play again? Do you sometimes long for a chubby hand and a voice so sweetly shrill? Oh, teddy bear, don't you understand why the house is awfully still? You sit with your muzzle propped on your paws and your whimsical face askew. Don't wait. Don't wait for your friend because he's sleeping and dreaming, too. I, sleeping long, you remember how he stabbed our hearts with his cries and, oh, the dew of pain on his brow and the deeps of pain in his eyes and, teddy bear, you remember, too, as he sighed and sank to his rest, how all of a sudden he smiled to you and he clutched you close to his breast. I'll put you away, little teddy bear, in the cupboard far from my sight. Maybe he'll come and he'll kiss you there, a wee white ghost in the night. But me, I'll live with my love and pain a weiriful lifetime through and my hope, will I see him again, again? Ah, God, if I only knew! After old men and children I am greatly interested in dogs. I will go out of my way to caress one who shows any desire to be friendly. There is a very filthy fellow who collects cigarette stubs on the Boumish and who is always followed by a starved yellow cur. The other day I came across them in a little side street. The man was stretched on the pavement brutishly drunk and dead to the world. The dog, lying by his side, seemed to look at me with sad imploring eyes. Though all the world despised that man, I thought, this poor brute loves him and will be faithful unto death. From this incident I wrote the verses that follow. The Outlaw. A wild and woeful race he ran of lust and sin by land and sea. Until abhorred of God and man they swung him from the gallows' tree and then he climbed the starry stair and dumb and naked and alone with head unbowed and brazen glare he stood before the judgment throne. The keeper of the record spoke, This man, O Lord, has mocked thy name. The weak have wept beneath his yoke. The strong have fled before his flame. The blood of babes is on his sword. His life is evil to the brim. Look down, decree his doom, O Lord. Lo, there is none will speak for him. The golden trumpets blew a blast that echoed in the crypts of hell and there was judgment to be passed and lips were hushed and silence fell. The man was mute, he made no stir, erect before the judgment seat when all at once a mongrel ker crept out and cowered and licked his feet. It licked his feet with a whining cry. Come heaven, come hell, what did it care? It leapt, it tried to catch his eye. Its master, yea, its God was there. Then as a thrill of wonder sped through throngs of shining seraphim the judge of all looked down and said, Lo, here is one who pleads for him. And who shall love of these the least and who by word or look or deed shall pit his show to bird or beast by me shall have a friend in need. I, though his sin be black as night and though he stand midmen alone he shall be softened in my sight and find a pleader by my throne. So let this man to glory win from life to life salvation glean by pain and sacrifice and sin until he stand before me clean. For he who loves the least of these and here I say and here repeat shall win himself an angel's please for mercy at my judgment seat. I take my exercise in the form of walking. It keeps me fit and leaves me free to think. In this way I have come to know Paris like my pocket. I have explored its large and little streets, its stateliness and its slums. But most of all I love the caves between the leafage and the sunlit scene. Like shuttles the little streamers dart up and down weaving the water into patterns of foam. Cigar shaped barges stream under the lacework of the many bridges and make me think of tranquil days and willow-fringed horizons. But what I love most is the stealing in of night when the sky takes on that strange elusive purple, when eyes turn to the evening star and marvel at its brightness, when the Eiffel Tower becomes a strange, shadowy stairway yearning in an impotent effort to the careless moon. Here is my latest ballad. Short, if not very sweet. The walkers. He speaks. Walking, walking, oh the joy of walking, swinging down the tawny lanes with head held high, striding up the green hills through the heather stalking, swishing through the woodlands where the brown leaves lie, marvelling at all things, windmills gaily turning, apples for the cider-press, ruby-hued and gold, tales of rabbits twinkling, scarlet berries burning, wedge of geese high-flying in the skies clear-cold, light in little windows, field and furrow darkling, home again returning hungry as a hawk, whistling up the garden, ruddy-cheeked and sparkling, oh, but I am happy as I walk, walk, walk. She speaks. Walking, walking, oh the curse of walking, slouching round the grim square shuffling up the street, slinking down the byway, all my grace is hawking, offering my body to each man I meet, peering in the gin-shop where the lads are drinking, trying to look gay-like, crazy with the blues, halting in a doorway shuddering and shrinking, oh, my draggled feather and my thin wet shoes. Here's a drunken drover. Hello there, oh dearie. No, he only curses. Can't be got to talk. On and on till daylight. Famished, wet and weary. God in heaven help me as I walk, walk, walk. End of book three, late summer, part two. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Kristen Hughes. Ballads of a Bohemian by Robert W. Service. Book three, late summer, part three. The Cafe de la Source, late July, 1914. The other evening McBean was in a pessimistic mood. Why do you write? He asked me gloomily. Obviously, I said, to avoid starving, to produce something that will buy me food, shelter, raiment. If you were a millionaire, would you still write? Yes, I said after a moment's thought. You get an idea, it haunts you. It seems to clamor for expression. It begins to obsess you. At last, in desperation, you embody it in a poem and essay a story. There, it is disposed of. You are at rest. It troubles you no more. Yes, if I were a millionaire, I should write. If it were only to escape from my ideas. You have given two reasons why men write, said McBean, for gain, for self-expression. Then again, some men write to amuse themselves. Some because they conceive they have a mission in the world. Some because they have real genius and are conscious that they can enrich the literature of all time. I must say, I don't know of any belonging to the latter class. We are living in an age of mediocrity. There is no writer of today who will be read twenty years after he is dead. That's a truth that must come home to the best of them. I guess they're not losing much sleep over it, I said. Take novelists, continued McBean. The line of first-class novelists ended with Dickens and Thackery. Then followed some of the second class, Stevenson, Meredith Hardy. And today we have three novelists of the third class. Good, capable craftsmen. We can trust ourselves comfortably in their hands. We can read and enjoy them. But do you think our children will? Yours won't, anyway, I said. Don't be too sure, I may surprise you yet. I may get married and turn bourgeois. The best thing that could happen to McBean would be that. It might change his point of view. He is so painfully discouraging. I have never mentioned my ballads to him. He would be sure to throw cold water on them. And as it draws near to its end, the thought of my book grows more and more dear to me. How I will get it published, I know not. But I will. Then, even if it doesn't sell, even if nobody reads it, I will be content. Out of this brief, perishable me, I will have made something concrete. Something that will preserve my thoughts within its dusty covers long after I am dead in dust. Here is one of my latest. Poor Peter. Blind Peter Piper used to play all up and down the city. I'd often meet him on my way and throw a coin for pity. But all amid his sparkling tones, his ear was quick as any to catch upon the cobblestones the jingle of my penny. And as upon a day that shone he piped a merry measure. How well you play, I chanced to say. Poor Peter glowed with pleasure. You'd think the words of praise I spoke were all the pay he needed. The artist in the play awoke. The penny lay unheeded. Now winter's here, the wind is shrill, his coat is thin and tattered. Yet Hark! he's playing trill on trill as if his music mattered. And somehow, though the city looks soaked through and through with shadows, he makes you think of singing brooks and larks and sunny meadows. Poor chap. He often starves, they say. Well, well I can believe it. For when you chuck a coin his way he'll let some street-boy thieve it. I fear he freezes in the night. My praise I've long repented. Yet look! his face is all the light. Blind Peter seems contented. A day later. On the terrace of the Closeree de Lilaas I came on Saxon Dane. He was smoking his big briar and drinking a huge glass of brown beer. The tree gave a pleasant shade and he had thrown his sombrero on a chair. I noted how his high brow was bronzed by the sun and there were golden lights in his broad beard. There was something massive and imposing in the man as he sat there in brooding thought. McBean, he told me, was sick and unable to leave his room, rheumatism. So I bought a cooked chicken and a bottle of Barzac and, mounting to the apartment of the invalid, I made him eat and drink. McBean was very despondent but cheered up greatly. I think he rather dreads the future. He cannot save money and all he makes he spends. He's always been a rover, often tried to settle down but could not. I think he wishes for security. I fear, however, it is too late. The wistful one. I sought the trails of south and north. I wandered east and west. But pride and passion drove me forth and would not let me rest. And still I seek as still I roam a snug roof overhead. Four walls, my own, a quiet home. You'll have it when you're dead. McBean is one of Bohemia's victims. It is a country of the young. The old have no place in it. He will gradually lose his grip, go down and down. I am sorry. He is my nearest approach to a friend. I do not make them easily. I have deep reserves. I like solitude. I am never so surrounded by boon companions as when I am all alone. But though I am solitary, I realize the beauty of friendship. And on looking through my notebook, I find the following. If you had a friend. If you had a friend, strong, simple, true, who knew your faults and who understood, who believed in the very best of you, and who cared for you as a father would, who would stick by you to the very end, who would smile however the world might frown, I'm sure you would try to please your friend. You would never think to throw him down. And supposing your friend was high and great, and he lived in a palace rich and tall, and sat like a king in shining state, and his praise was loud on the lips of all. Well, then, when he turned to you alone, and he singled you out from all the crowd, and he called you up to his golden throne. Oh, wouldn't you just be jolly proud? If you had a friend like this, I say, so sweet and tender, so strong and true, you'd try to please him in every way. You'd live at your bravest, now wouldn't you? His worth would shine in the words you penned. You'd shout his praises. Yet now it's odd. You tell me you haven't got such a friend. You haven't? I wonder. What of God? To how few has granted the privilege of doing the work which lies closest to the heart, the work for which one is best fitted. The happy man is he who knows his limitations, yet bows to no false gods. McBean is not happy. He is overridden by his appetites, and to satisfy them he writes stuff that in his heart he despises. Saxon Dane is not happy. His dream exceeds his grasp. His twisted tortured phrases mark the vague grandiosity of his visions. I am happy. My talent is proportioned to my ambition. The things I like to write are the things I like to read. I prefer the lesser poets to the greater. The cackle of the barnyard fowl to the scream of the eagle. I lack the divinity of discontent. True contentment comes from within. It dominates circumstance. It is resignation wedded to philosophy. A Christian quality seldom attained except by the old. There is such an one I sometimes see being wheeled about in Luxembourg. His face is beautiful in its thankfulness. The contented man. How good God is to me, he said. For have I not a mansion tall, with trees and lawns of velvet tread, and happy helpers at my call? With beauty is my life a brim, with tranquil hours and dreams apart. You wonder that I yield to him that best of prayers a grateful heart? How good God is to me, he said. For look, though gone is all my wealth, how sweet it is to earn one's bread with brawny arms and brimming health. Oh, now I know the joy of strife. To sleep so sound, to wake so fit. Ah, yes, how glorious is life. I thank him for each day of it. How good God is to me, he said. Though health and wealth are gone, it's true. Things might be worse, I might be dead. And here I'm living, laughing too. Serene beneath the evening sky I wait, and every man's my friend. God's most contented man am I. He keeps me smiling to the end. Today the basin of the Luxembourg is bright with little boats. Hundreds of happy children romp around it. Little ones everywhere. Yet there is no other city with so many childless homes. The spirit of the unborn babe. The spirit of the unborn babe peered through the window-pane. Peered through the window-pane that glowed like a beacon in the night. For, oh, the sky was desolate and wild with wind and rain. And how the little room was crammed with coziness and light. Except the flirting of the fire, there was no sound at all. The woman sat beside the hearth, her knitting on her knee. The shadow of her husband's head was dancing on the wall. She looked with staring eyes at it. She looked, yet did not see. She only saw a childish face that topped the table-rim. A little wistful ghost that smiled and vanished quick away. And then, because her tender eyes were flooding to the brim, she lowered her head. Don't sorrow, dear. She heard him softly say. It's over now. We'll try to be as happy as before. Ah, they who little children have grant hostages to pain. We gave life chance to wound us once, but never, never more. The spirit of the unborn babe fled through the night again. The spirit of the unborn babe went wielded in the dark, like term against the winds tore down and whirled it with the snow. And then, amid the writhing storm, it saw a tiny spark. A window broad, a spacious room, all goldenly aglow. A woman slim and Paris gowned, and exquisitely fair. Who smiled with a rapture as she watched her jewels catch the blaze. A man in faultless evening-dress, young, handsome, debonair. Who smoked his cigarette and looked with frank admiring gaze. Oh, we are happy, sweet, said he. Youth, health, and wealth are ours. What if a thousand toil and sweat that we may live at ease? What if the hands are worn and torn that strew our path with flowers? Ah, well, we did not make the world. Let us not think of these. Let's seek the beauty spots of earth, dear heart, just you and I. Let other women bring forth life with sorrow and with pain. Above our door will hang the sign, no children need apply. The spirit of the unborn babe sped through the night again. The spirit of the unborn babe went whirling on and on. It soared above a city vast, it swept down to a slum. It saw within a grimy house a light that dimly shone. It peered in through a window-pane, and low a voice said come. And so a little girl was born amid the dirt and din, and lived in spite of everything, for life has ordered so. A child whose eyes first opened wide to swinishness and sin. A child whose love and innocence met only curse and blow. And so in due and proper course she took the path of shame, and gladly died in hospital, quite old at twenty years. And when God comes to weigh it all, ah, whose shall be the blame, for all her maimed and poisoned life, her torture and her tears. For, oh, it is not what we do, but what we have not done. And on that day of reckoning, when all is plain and clear, what if we stand before the throne, blood guilty every one? Maybe the blackest sins of all are selfishness and fear. End of book three, late summer, part three. The Café de La Paix, August 1, 1914. Paris and I are out of tune. As I sit at this famous corner, the faint breeze is stale and weary. Stale and weary, too, the faces that swirl round me. While overhead, the electric sign of somebody's chocolate appears and vanishes with irritating insistency. The very trees seem artificial, gleaming under the arc lights with a raw virility that rasps my nerves. Poor little trees, I mutter, growing in all this grime and glare. Your only dry-ads, the loitering ladies with the complexions of such brilliant certainty. Your only pipes of pan are kestrel echoes from the clamorous cafes. Exiles of the forest, what know you of full-blossomed winds, of red-embed sunsets, of the gentle admonition of spring rain. Life that would feign be a melody seems here almost a melody. I crave for the balm of nature, the anodyne of solitude, the breath of Mother Earth. Tell me, o wistful trees, what shall I do? Then that stale and weary wind rustles the leaves of the nearest sycamore, and I'm sure it whispers, Brittany. So tomorrow I am off, off to the land of little fields. Finisterre. Hurrah! I'm off to Finisterre, to Finisterre, to Finisterre. My sashel's swinging on my back, my staff is in my hand. I've twenty Louis in my purse, I know the sun and sea are there. And so I'm starting out today to tramp the golden land. I'll go alone and glorying, with on my lips a song of joy. I'll leave behind the city with its canker and its care. I'll swing along so sturdily. Oh, won't I be the happy boy? A singing on the rocky roads, the roads of Finisterre. Oh, have you been to Finisterre? And do you know a wind-grey town that echoes to the clatter of a thousand wooden shoes? And have you seen the fisher-girls go gallivanting up and down and watch the tawny boats go out and herd the roaring crews? Oh, would you sit with pipe and bowl and dream upon some sunny key? Or would you walk the windy heath and drink the cooler air? Or would you seek a cradled cove and tussle with the topaz sea, pack up your kit to-morrow, lad, and hasten to Finisterre? Oh, I will go to Finisterre. There's nothing that can hold me back. I'll laugh with Yves and Léon, and I'll chaff with Rose and Jean. I'll seek the little quaint bouvet that's kept by Mother Merdrenac, who wears a cap of many frills and swears just like a man. I'll yarn with hearty hairy chaps who dance and leap and crack their heels, who swallow cupfuls of cognac and never turn a hair. I'll watch the nut-brown boats come in with mullet, place, and conga eels. The jeweled harvest of the sea they reap in Finisterre. Yes, I'll come back from Finisterre with memories of shining days, of scaly nets and salty men in overalls of brown, of ancient women knitting as they watch the tethered cattle-grays by little nesting beaches where the gorse goes blazing down, of headlands silvering the sea, of calvaries against the sky, of corn of angry sunsets, and of cognac grim and bare. Oh, won't I have the leaping veins and tawny cheek and sparkling eye when I come back to Montparnasse and dream of Finisterre? Two days later. Behold me, with staff and script, footing it merrily in the land of pardons. I have no goal. When I am weary, I stop at some auberge. When I am rested, I go on again. Neither do I put any constraint on my spirit. No subduing of the mind to the task of the moment. I dream to heart's content. My dreams stretch into the future. I see myself a singer of simple songs, a laureate of the underdog. I will write books, a score of them. I will voyage far and wide. I will. But there. Dreams are dangerous. They waste the time one should spend in making them come true. Yet when we do make them come true, we find the vision sweeter than the reality. How much of our happiness do we owe to dreams? I have in mind one old chap who used to herd the sheep on my uncle's farm. Old David Smale. He dreamed away his hours in school. He sat with such an absent air. The master reckoned him a fool and gave him up in dull despair. When other lads were making hay, you'd find him loafing by the stream. He'd take a book and slip away, and just pretend to fish and dream. His brothers passed him in the race. They climbed the hill and clutched the prize. He did not seem to heed. His face was tranquil as the evening skies. He lived apart. He spoke with few. Abstractedly through life he went. Oh, what he dreamed of no one knew. And yet he seemed to be content. I see him now so old and gray. His eyes with inward vision dim. And though he faltered on the way, somehow I almost envied him. And last beside his bed I stood. And his life done so soon he sighed. It's been so rich, so full, so good. I've loved it all. And so he died. Another day. Framed in hedge-rose of emerald, the wheat glows with a caloric fervour, as if gorged with summer heat. In the vivid green of pastures old women are herding cows. Calm and patient are their faces, as with gentle industry they bend over their knitting. One feels that they are necessary to the landscape. To gaze at me the field-workers suspend the magnificent lethargy of their labours. The men with the reaping-hooks improve the occasion by another pull at the cider-bottle under the stook. The women raise apathetic brown faces from the sheaf they are tying. Every one is a study in deliberation, though the crop is russet-ripe and crying to be cut. Then on I go again amid high banks overgrown with fern and honeysuckle. Sometimes I come on an old mill that seems to have been constructed by Constable, so charmingly does nature imitate art. By the deserted house, half-drowned in greenery, the velvety wheel, dripping in the crystal water, seems to protest against this prolongation of its toil. Then again I come on its brother, the mill of the wind, whirling its arms so cheerly as it turns its great white stones for its master, the flowery miller by the door. These things delight me. I am in a land where time has lagged, where simple people timorously hug the past. How far away now seems the welter and swelter of the city, the hectic sophistication of the streets, the sense of wonder is strong in me again, the joy of looking at familiar things, as if one was seeing them for the first time. The wonderer. I wish that I could understand the moving marvel of my hand. I watch my fingers turn and twist, the supple bending of my wrist, the dainty touch of fingertip, the steel intensity of grip, a tool of exquisite design, with pride I think it's mine, it's mine. Then there's the wonder of my eyes, where hills and houses, seas and skies, in waves of light converge and pass, and print themselves as on a glass. Line, form and colour live in me. I am the beauty that I see. Ah, I could write a book of sighs about the wonder of my eyes. What of the wonder of my heart, that plays so faithfully its part? I hear it running, sound and sweet. It does not seem to miss a beat. Between the cradle and the grave it never falters, stanch and brave. Alas, I wish I had the art to tell the wonder of my heart. Then, oh, but how can I explain the wondrous wonder of my brain, that marvellous machine that brings all consciousness of wonderings, that lets me from myself leap out and watch my body walk about. It's hopeless, all my words are vain to tell the wonder of my brain. But do not think, oh patient friend, who reads these stanzas to the end, that I myself would glorify, you're just as wonderful as I. And all creation in our view is quite as marvellous as you. Come, let us on the seashore stand and wonder at a grain of sand, and then into the meadow-pass, and marvel at a blade of grass, or cast our vision high and far and thrill with wonder at a star. A host of stars, nights holy tent, huge glittering with wonderment. If wonder is in great and small, then what of him who made it all? In eyes and brain and heart and limb let's see the wondrous work of him. In house and hill and sword and sea, in bird and beast and flower and tree, in everything from sun to sod, the wonder and the awe of God. August 9, 1914 For some time the way has been growing wilder, thick-set hedges have yielded dykes of stone, and there is every sign that I am approaching the rugged region of the coast. At each point of vantage I can see a cross, often a relic of the early Christians, stumpy and corroded. Then I come on a slab of grey stone upstanding about fifteen feet. Like a sentinel on that solitary plain it overwhelms me with a sense of mystery. But as I go on through this desolate land these stones become more and more familiar, like soldiers they stand in rank, extending over the moor. The sky is culled with cloud, savor a sullen sunset shoots blood-red braze across the plain. Bathed in that sinister light stands my army of stone, and a wind swooping down seems to wail amid its ranks. As in a glass darkly I can see the skin-clad men, the women with their tangled hair, the beast-like feast, the cowering terror of the night. Then the sunset is cut off suddenly and a clammy mist shrouds that silent army. So it is almost with a shudder I take my last look at the stones of Carnac. But now my pilgrimage is drawing to an end. A painter friend who lives by the sea has asked me to stay with him a while. Well, I have walked a hundred miles, singing on the way. I have dreamed and dawdled, land exalted. I have drunk buckets of cider and eaten many an omelet that seemed like a golden glorification of its egg. It has all been very sweet, but it will also be sweet to loathe a while. Oh, it is good! Oh, it is good to drink and sup, and then beside the kindly fire to smoke and heap the faggots up, and rest and dream to heart's desire. Oh, it is good to ride and run, to roam the greenwood wild and free, to hunt, to idle in the sun, to leap into the laughing sea. Oh, it is good with hand and brain to gladly till the chosen soil, and after honest sweat and strain to see the harvest of one's toil. 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. So much is good, we thank the God, for all the tokens thou hast given, that here on earth our feet have trod thy little shining trails of heaven. End of book three, late summer. Part four. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Kristen Hughes. Ballads of a Bohemian by Robert W. Service. Book three, late summer. Part five. August 10th, 1914. I am living in a little house so near the sea that at high tide I can see on my bedroom wall the reflected ripple of the water. At night I wake into the melodious welter of waves, or maybe there is a great stillness, and then I know that the sand and sea grass are lying naked to the moon. But soon the tide returns, and once more I hear the roistering of the waves. Calvert, my friend, is a lover as well as a painter of nature. He rises with the dawn to see the morning mist kindle to coral, and the sun's edge clear the hill-crest. As he munches his coarse bread and sips his white wine, what dreams are his beneath the magic changes of the sky? He will paint the same scene under a dozen conditions of light. He has looked so long for beauty that he has come to see it everywhere. I love this friendly home of his. A peace steals over my spirit, and I feel as if I could stay here always. Someday I hope that I too may have such and one, and that I may write like this. I have some friends. I have some friends, some worthy friends, and worthy friends are rare. These carpet slippers on my feet, that padded leather chair, this old and shabby dressing gown, so well the worse of wear. I have some friends, some honest friends, and honest friends are few. My pipe of briar, my open fire, a book that's not too new. My bed's so warm, the nights of storm I love to listen to. I have some friends, some good, good friends, who faithful are to me. My wrestling partner when I rise, the big and burly sea. My little boat that's riding there, so saucy and so free. I have some friends, some golden friends, whose worth will not decline. A tawny Irish terrier, a purple shading pine, a little red roofed cottage, that's so proudly I call mine. All other friends may come and go, all other friendships fail, but these, the friends I've worked to win, oh they will never stale, and comfort me till time shall write the finish to my tale. Calvert tries to paint more than the thing he sees. He tries to paint behind it, to express its spirit. He believes that beauty is God-made manifest, and that when we discover him in nature, we discover him in ourselves. But Calvert did not always see thus. At one time he was a pagan, content to paint the outward aspect of things. It was after his little child died, he gained in vision. Maybe the thought that the dead are lost to us was too unbearable. He had to believe in a coming together again. The quest. I saw him on the purple seas. I saw him on the peaks of flame. Amid the gloom of giant trees and canyons, lone I called his name. The wasted ways of earth I trod. In vain. In vain I found not God. I sought him in the hives of men, the city's grand, the hamlet's gray, the temples old beyond my ken, the tabernacles of today. All life that is from cloud to cloud, I sought. Alas! I found not God. Then after roaming far and wide, in streets and seas and deserts wild, I came to stand at last beside the deathbed of my little child. Low as I bent beneath the rod I raised my eyes, and there was God. A golden mile of sand swings hammock-like between two tusks of rock. The sea is sleeping sapphire that wakes to cream and crash upon the beach. There is a majesty in the detachment of its lazy waves, and it is good in the night to hear its friendly roar. Good too to leap forth with the first sunshine and fall into its arms, let it pummel the body to living ecstasy and send one to breakfast glad-eyed and glowing. Behind the house the green sword slopes to a wheat field that is like a wall of gold. Here I lie and laze away the time, or dip into a favourite book, Stevenson's Letters of Bellach's Path to Rome. Bees drone in the wild time, a cuckoo keeps calling, a lark spills jeweled melody. Then there is a seeming silence, but it is the silence of a deeper sound. After all, silence is only man's confession of his deafness. Like death, like eternity, it is a word that means nothing. So lying there, I hear the breathing of the trees, the crepitation of the growing grass, the seething of the sap and the movements of innumerable insects, strange how I think with distaste of the spurious glitter of Paris, of my garret, even of my poor little book. I watch the wife of my friend gathering poppies in the wheat. There is a sadness in her face, for it is only a year ago they lost their little one. Often I see her steal away to the village graveyard, sitting silent for long and long. The Comforter. As I sat by my baby's bed that's open to the sky, there fluttered round and round my head a radiant butterfly. And as I wept of hearts that ache the saddest in the land, it left a lily for my sake and lighted on my hand. I watched it, oh, so quietly, and though it rose and flew, as if it faint would comfort me, it came and came anew. Now where, my darling, lies at rest, I do not dare to sigh. For, look, there gleams upon my breast a snow-white butterfly. My friends will have other children, and if some day they should read this piece of verse, perhaps they will think of the city lad, who used to sit under the old fig tree in the garden and watch the lizard sun themselves on the time-worn wall. The other one. 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. So they all are glad, and they nestle in and squat on the rough old nursery rug, and they nudge and hush as I begin, and the fire leaps up and all's so snug. And there I sit in the big arm-chair, and how they are eager and sweet and wise, and they cup their chins in their hands and stare at the heart of the flame with thoughtful eyes. And then, as I read by the ruddy glow, and the little ones sit entranced and still, he's drawing near. Ah, I know. I know he's listening too, as he always will. He's there. He's standing beside my knee. I see him so well, my wee, wee son. Oh, children, dear, don't look at me. I'm reading now for the other one. For the firelight glints in his golden hair, and his wandering eyes are fixed on my face, and he rests on the arm of my easy chair, and the books are blur, and I lose my place, and I touch my lips to his shining head, and my voice breaks down, and the story's done. Oh, children, kiss me and go to bed. Leave me to think of the other one. Of the one who will never grow up at all, who will always be just a child at play, tender and trusting and sweet and small, who will never leave me and go away, who will never hurt me and give me pain, who will comfort me when I'm all alone, a heart of love that's without a stain, always and always my own, my own. Yet a thought shines out from the dark of pain, and it gives me hope to be reconciled, that each of us must be born again and live and die as a little child, so that with souls all shining white, whiter snow and without one sin, we may come to the gates of eternal light, where only children may enter in. So gentle mothers don't ever grieve because you have lost, but kiss the rod. From the depths of your woe be glad. Believe you've given an angel unto God. Rejoice, you've a child whose youth endures, who comes to you when the day is done. Wistful for love, oh yours, just yours. Dearest of all, the other one. Catastrophe. Brittany, August 14th, 1914. And now I fear I must write in another strain. Up to this time I have been too happy. I have existed in a magic pohemia, largely of my own making. Hope, faith, enthusiasm have been mine. Each day has had its struggle, its failure, its triumph. However, that has all ended. During the past week we have lived breathlessly. For in spite of the exultant sunshine, our spirits have been under a cloud. A deepening shadow of horror and calamity. War. Even as I write, in our little village steeple the bells are ringing madly. And in every little village steeple all over the land. As he hears it, the harvester checks his scythe on the swing. The clock throws down his pen. The shopkeeper puts up his shutters. Only in the cafes there is a clamour of voices and a drowning of care. For here every man must fight. Every home give tribute. There is no question, no appeal. By heredity and discipline all minds are shaped to this great hour. So tomorrow each man will seek his barracks and become a soldier, as completely as if he had never been anything else. With the same docility as he dons his baggy red trousers will he let some muddle-headed general hurl him to destruction for some dubious gain. Today a father, a homemaker. Tomorrow father for cannon. So they all go without hesitation, without bitterness. And the great military machine that knows not humanity swings them to their fate. I marvel at this sense of duty. The resignation, the sacrifice. It is magnificent. It is France. And the women, those who wait and weep. Ah, today I have not seen one who did not weep. Yes, one. She was very old and she stood by her garden gate with her hand on the uplifted latch. As I passed she looked at me with eyes that did not see. She had no doubt sons and grandsons who must fight and she had good reason perhaps to remember the war of soissantes. When I passed an hour later she was still there, her hand on the uplifted latch. August 30th. The men have gone. Only remain greybeards women and children. Calvert and I have been helping our neighbours to get in the harvest. No doubt we aid. There, with the old men and children, a sense of uneasiness and even shame comes over me. I would like to return to Paris, but the railway is mobilised. Each day I grow more discontented. Up there in the red north great things are doing and I'm out of it. I am thoroughly unhappy. Then Calvert comes to me with a plan. He has a Ford car. We will all three go to Paris. He intends to offer himself and his car to the Red Cross. His wife will nurse. So we are very happy at the solution and tomorrow we are off. Paris. Back again. Closed shutters, deserted streets. How glum everything is. Those who are not mobilised seem uncertain how to turn. Everyone buys the papers and reads grimly of disaster. No news is bad news. I go to my garret as to a beloved friend. Everything is just as I left it. So that it seems I have never been away. I sigh with relief and joy. I will take up my work again. Serene above the storm I will watch and wait. Although I have been brought up in England, I am American born. My country is not connected. My country is not concerned. So going to the Dome Café, I seek some of my comrades. Strange. They have gone. McBean I am told is in England. By dying his hair and lying about his age, he has managed to enlist in the Seaforth Highlanders. Saxon Dane too. He has joined the foreign legion and even now may be fighting. Well let them go. I will keep out of the mess. But why did they go? I wish I knew. War is murder, criminal folly, against humanity. Imperialism is at the root of it. We are fools and dupes. Yes, I will think and write of other things. McBean has enlisted. I hate violence. I would not willingly cause pain to anything breathing. I would rather be killed than kill. I would stand above the battle and watch it from afar. Dane is in the foreign legion. How disturbing it all is. One cannot settle down to anything. Every day I meet men who tell the most wonderful stories in the most casual way. I envy them. I too want to have experiences, to live where life's beat is most intense. But that's a poor reason for going to war. And yet, though I shrink from the idea of fighting, I might in some way help those who are. McBean and Dane, for example. Sitting lonely in the dome, I seem to see their ghosts in the corner. McBean listening with his keen, sarcastic smile. Sax and Dane banging his great hairy fist on the table till the glasses jump. Where are they now? Living a life that I will never know. When they come back, if they ever do, shall I not feel shame in their presence? Oh, this filthy war. Things were going on so beautifully. We were all so happy, so full of ambition, of hope. Laughing and talking of a pipe and bowl. And in our garret seeking to realize our dreams. Ah, these days will never come again. Then, as I sit there, Calver seeks me out. He has joined an ambulance corps that is going to the front. Will I come in? Yes, I say. I'll do anything. So it is all settled. Tomorrow I give up my freedom. End of book three, late summer, part five.