Young Fellow My Lad

"So you'll live, you'll live, Young Fellow My Lad,

In the gleam of the evening star,

In the wood-note wild and the laugh of the child,

In all sweet things that are.

And you'll never die, my wonderful boy,

While life is noble and true;

For all our beauty and hope and joy

We will owe to our lads like you."

  ~ Robert Service  (excerpt)

(Canadian poet)

Robert Service was born in Preston, England, on January 16, 1874. Service emigrated to Canada and settled on Van couver Island where he engaged in farming but gave this up for his explorer's life, traveling up and down the Pacific Coast, experiencing many hardships.

Service, an ardent motor enthusiast, enlisted as an ambulance driver early in the war. Stories of the bravery of his exploits cannot be given here, but he has faced the shell-stormed road with his loads of wounded, he has lived the things he writes, and just as he has analyzed the Yukon man, so has he inter preted the struggles of the soldier of to-day.

Tiring of this he finally joined the staff of the Canadian Bank of Commerce, in Victoria, B. C., in 1905 and was transferred to White House, Yukon Territory, and then to Dawson. Eight years in the Yukon have resulted in his metamorphosis from a bank employee to one of our most important poets of to-day.

IN FLANDERS' FIELDS

In Flanders' fields, the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place ; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly,

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved ; and now we lie

In Flanders' fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe!

To you, from failing hands, we throw

The torch. Be yours to lift it high !

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies blow

In Flanders' fields.

~ John McCrae

(Canadian Poet)

If one should be asked, "What Canadian  poets are contributing to contemporary American  poetry?" the answer would be "Robert Service" and there the  average reader in the United States would stop.

(The  Canadian  regiments have played one of the most courageous, spectacular and effective parts in the World War and it is natural that from their ranks should come poets. And John McCrae is entitled to a place among our contemporary  American  poets although the man himself has paid "the last full measure of devotion.")