Robert William Service (Роберт Уильям Сервис)

Inspiration

How often have I started out
With no thought in my noodle,
And wandered here and there about,
Where fancy bade me toddle;
Till feeling faunlike in my glee
I've voiced some gay distiches,
Returning joyfully to tea,
A poem in my britches.

A-squatting on a thymy slope
With vast of sky about me,
I've scribbled on an envelope
The rhymes the hills would shout me;
The couplets that the trees would call,
The lays the breezes proffered...
Oh no, I didn't think at all -
I took what Nature offered.

For that's the way you ought to write -
Without a trace of trouble;
Be super-charged with high delight
And let the words out-bubble;
Be voice of vale and wood and stream
Without design or proem:
Then rouse from out a golden dream
To find you've made a poem.

So I'll go forth with mind a blank,
And sea and sky will spell me;
And lolling on a thymy bank
I'll take down what they tell me;
As Mother Nature speaks to me
Her words I'll gaily docket,
So I'll come singing home to tea
A poem in my pocket. 

Robert William Service’s other poems:

  1. Spanish Women
  2. The Prospector
  3. Playboy
  4. Pullman Porter
  5. Abandoned Dog

Poems of other poets with the same name (Стихотворения других поэтов с таким же названием):

  • Samuel Johnson (Сэмюэл Джонсон) Inspiration (“LIFE of Ages, richly poured”)
  • Ella Wilcox (Элла Уилкокс) Inspiration (“Not like a daring, bold, aggressive boy”)

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