Robert William Service (Роберт Уильям Сервис)
My Suicide
I've often wondered why Old chaps who choose to die In evil passes, Before themselves they slay, Invariably they Take off their glasses? As I strolled by the Castle cliff An oldish chap I set my eyes on, Who stood so singularly stiff And stark against the blue horizon; A poet fashioning a sonnet, I thought; how rapt he labours on it! And then I blinked and stood astare, And questioned at my sight condition, For I was seeing empty air - He must have been an apparition. Amazed I gazed . . . no one was there: My sanity roused my suspicion. I strode to where I saw him stand So solitary in the sun - Nothing! just empty sew and land, no smallest sign of anyone. While down below I heard the roar Of waves, five hundred feet or more. I had been drinking, I confess; There was confusion in my brain, And I was feeling more or less The fumes of overnight champagne. So standing on that dizzy shelf: "You saw no one," I told myself. "No need to call the local law, For after all its not your business. You just imagined what you saw..." Then I was seized with sudden dizziness: For at my feet, beyond denying, A pair of spectacles were lying. And so I simply let them lie, And sped from that accursed spot. No lover of the police am I, And sooner would be drunk than not. "I'll scram," said I, "and leave the locals To find and trace them dam bi-focals."
Robert William Service’s other poems:
903
