Robert William Service (Роберт Уильям Сервис)
Causation
Said darling daughter unto me: "oh Dad, how funny it would be If you had gone to Mexico A score or so of years ago. Had not some whimsey changed your plan I might have been a Mexican. With lissome form and raven hair, Instead of being fat and fair. "Or if you'd sailed the Southern Seas And mated with a Japanese I might have been a squatty girl With never golden locks to curl, Who flirted with a painted fan, And tinkled on a samisan, And maybe slept upon a mat - I'm very glad I don't do that. "When I consider the romance Of all your youth of change and chance I might, I fancy, just as well Have bloomed a bold Tahitian belle, Or have been born... but there; ah no! I draw the line; and Esquimeaux. It scares me stiff to think of what I might have been; thank God! I'm not." Said I: "my dear, don't be absurd, Since everything that has occurred, Through seeming fickle in your eyes, Could not a jot be otherwise. For in this casual cosmic biz The world can be but what it is; And nobody can dare deny Part of this world is you and I. Or call it fate or destiny No other issue could there be. Though half the world I've wandered through Cause and effect have linked us two. Aye, all the aeons of the past Conspired to bring us here at last, And all I ever chanced to do Inevitably led to you. To you, to make you what you are, A maiden in a Morris car, IN Harris tweeds, an airedale too, But Anglo-Saxon through and through. And all the good and ill I've done In every land beneath the sun Magnificently led to this - A country cottage and; your kiss."
Robert William Service’s other poems:
903
