Robert Willian Service

Robert William Service was a very distinguished man, much like Shakespeare, he started what he loved at a young age. Throughout his life he’d been a part of World War 1, love, unprecedented joy, and great deals of experience. Robert W. Service wrote about current events, love, and life. Why do some poets treat their work differently? We can see many works of poetry and although full of “heart” the poets seem to shrip off their work. Robert W. Service doesn’t call his work poetry, but a verse. Robert William Service was born in 1874 in Preston, Lancashire, England. Being the eldest child of ten, Service followed his fathers footsteps as a bank cashier. Starting at a very young age, Service wrote his first poem at six years old. Robert W. Service studied English language and literature at the University of Glasgow. Over the years Service traveled to western Canada and Yukon. He met some very interesting people and fell in love with their stories. These people and their stories helped him to think of things to write about, such as the Cremation of Sam Mcgee, A Mediocre Man, The Spell Of Yukon, and many others. Before Service’s poems became famous, he offered to give a publisher one hundred of his own dollars so that his poems could be put into a book. But even before he offered this to the publisher, people already wanted to buy his poems. He put his poems into a book and the publisher offered Service a check with terms of publication rights. He accepted his offer, and this was the beginning of his career as a writer.

Service’s poem, The Spell of the Yukon, dives deeply into what life meant to Service. In the very beginning of the poem, Service says “...Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it,

And somehow the gold isn’t all…” To ...

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...st of her piece of bread, she ate with pure delight. Service’s heart was filled once he saw that. Once he saw a starving dog, he bandaged up his bleeding paw and brought him a bone. As Service said in the sixth stanza, “for God knows it is good to give; we may not have so long to live. So let’s stretch a hand to those in need, bird, beast, or man.” This poem shows the compassion that Service had and the reasons he wrote about his feelings and love for other human beings, as well as animals around the world.

Throughout many of Robert Service’s poems, you can realize, even within reading the first few, how much compassion, love, happiness and all good things that Service had. Service wrote about the things he saw, the things he did and the things he felt. The very distinguished Robert Service was a great poet who influenced many of the people around him by his work.