final tribute to robert service week

I am happy. My talent is proportioned to my ambition. The things I like to write are the things I like to read. I prefer the lesser pets to the greater, the cackle of the barn-yard fowl to the scream of the eagle. I lack the divinity of discontent
-from Ballads of a Bohemian

Ballads of a Bohemian was a very personal book. Between the ballads were diary-like entries. I have mostly put these on my page, but if you would like to read more of his poetry, click on the title of this article. Ballads of a Bohemian was written between 1914 and 1919 with a large gap between the year 1915 and 1919. During this time, he served the Red Cross during WWI, first for France and later for the USA. When I reread the following passage, it brought tears to my eyes, as I had forgotten the latter part of the book over the years. I don't think that typhoid fever made much of a dent in my subconscious when I read it years ago- but served as a great reminder of how much he and I share in life. I hope of course never to lose an arm..


A Lapse of Time and a Word of Explanation

The American Hospital, Neuilly,
January 1919.

Four years have passed and it is winter again. Much has happened.
When I last wrote, on the Somme in 1915, I was sickening with typhoid fever.

All that spring I was in hospital. Nevertheless, I was sufficiently recovered to take part in the Champagne battle in the fall of that year, and to "carry on" during the following winter. It was at Verdun I got my first wound.

In the spring of 1917 I again served with my Corps; but on the entry of the United States into the War I joined the army of my country. In the Argonne I had my left arm shot away.

As far as time and health permitted, I kept a record of these years, and also wrote much verse. All this, however, has disappeared under circumstances into which there is no need to enter here.

The loss was a cruel one, almost more so than that of my arm;
for I have neither the heart nor the power to rewrite this material.

And now, in default of something better, I have bundled together
this manuscript, and have added to it a few more verses, written in hospitals.

Let it represent me. If I can find a publisher for it, ~tant mieux~. If not, I will print it at my own cost, and any one who cares for a copy

can write to me --
Stephen Poore,
12 ~bis~, Rue des Petits Moineaux,
Paris.

With one last quotation from this poet will I leave you to your thoughts. May it inspire you as it inspired me.

True contentment comes from within. It dominates circumstance. It is a resignation wedded to philosophy, a Christian quality seldom attained except by the old.