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Robert W Service - Room 5: The Concert Singer
Work rating: Low

I`m one of these haphazard chaps
Who sit in cafes drinking;
A most improper taste, perhaps,
Yet pleasant, to my thinking.
For, oh, I hate discord and strife;
I`m sadly, weakly human;
And I do think the best of life
Is wine and song and woman.

Now, there`s that youngster on my right
Who thinks himself a poet,
And so he toils from morn to night
And vainly hopes to show it;
And there`s that dauber on my left,
Within his chamber shrinking —
He looks like one of hope bereft;
He lives on air, I`m thinking.

But me, I love the things that are,
My heart is always merry;
I laugh and tune my old guitar:
Sing ho! and hey-down-derry.
Oh, let them toil their lives away
To gild a tawdry era,
But I`ll be gay while yet I may:
Sing tira-lira-lira.

I`m sure you know that picture well,
A monk, all else unheeding,
Within a bare and gloomy cell
A musty volume reading;
While through the window you can see
In sunny glade entrancing,
With cap and bells beneath a tree
A jester dancing, dancing.

Which is the fool and which the sage?
I cannot quite discover;
But you may look in learning`s page
And I`ll be laughter`s lover.
For this our life is none too long,
And hearts were made for gladness;
Let virtue lie in joy and song,
The only sin be sadness.

    So let me troll a jolly air,
    Come what come will to-morrow;
    I`ll be no cabotin of care,
    No souteneur of sorrow.
    Let those who will indulge in strife,
    To my most merry thinking,
    The true philosophy of life
    Is laughing, loving, drinking.

And there`s that weird and ghastly hag
Who walks head bent, with lips a-mutter;
With twitching hands and feet that drag,
And tattered skirts that sweep the gutter.
An outworn harlot, lost to hope,
With staring eyes and hair that`s hoary
I hear her gibber, dazed with dope:
I often wonder what`s her story.
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