Tag: Robert Service

Rides Around: The Men That Don’t Fit In

Edgar, Travel

Last week’s Rides Around has us still thinking about why people like the spirit of motorcycles, and specifically adventure motorcycles.

Robert Service captured the spirit of the fabled open road in a poem called The Men That Don’t Fit In.  Taken as a whole, the poem may not accurately describe every adventure rider, but the lines that speak of the allure of the new, the challenge of the mountain and the love of the unknown can’t help but catch our attention.

 

There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,

A race that can’t stay still;

So they break the hearts of kith and kin,

And they roam the world at will.

They range the field and they rove the flood,

And they climb the mountain’s crest;

Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,

And they don’t know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;

They are strong and brave and true;

But they’re always tired of the things that are,

And they want the strange and new.

They say: “Could I find my proper groove,

What a deep mark I would make!”

So they chop and change, and each fresh move

Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs

With a brilliant, fitful pace,

It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones

Who win in the lifelong race.

And each forgets that his youth has fled,

Forgets that his prime is past,

Till he stands one day, with a hope that’s dead,

In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;

He has just done things by half.

Life’s been a jolly good joke on him,

And now is the time to laugh.

Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;

He was never meant to win;

He’s a rolling stone, and it’s bred in the bone;

He’s a man who won’t fit in.

-Robert Service, Source: The Spell of the Yukon, and Other Verses (1911)
The Rig: 2008 BMW 1250 GS Adventure
The Location: Texas Hill Country
The Driver: a Robert Service fan 
The Special Circumstance: taking the long way
Edgar~

Footloose and Heart-Free

Travel

On a recent trip to Canyonlands National Park, Druid Arch was rediscovered along with a poem by Robert Service.

This is a magnificent and awe-inspiring place.  It is otherworldly and tickles a funny place in a wanderer’s heart, the same place Robert Service’s Rover plucks at…

– C.K.

The Rover by Robert Service 

I

Oh, how good it is to be
Foot-loose and heart-free!
Just my dog and pipe and I, underneath the vast sky;
Trail to try and goal to win, white road and cool inn;
Fields to lure a lad afar, clear spring and still star;
Lilting feet that never tire, green dingle, fagot fire;
None to hurry, none to hold, heather hill and hushed fold;
Nature like a picture book, laughing leaf and bright brook;
Every day a jewel bright, set serenely in the night;
Every night a holy shrine, radiant for a day divine.
Weathered cheek and kindly eye, let the wanderer go by.
Woman-love and wistful heart, let the gipsy one depart.
For the farness and the road are his glory and his goad.
Oh, the lilt of youth and Spring! Eyes laugh and lips sing.
Yea, but it is good to be
Foot-loose and heart-free!

II

Yet how good it is to come
Home at last, home, home!
On the clover swings the bee, overhead’s the hale tree;
Sky of turquoise gleams through, yonder glints the lake’s blue.
In a hammock let’s swing, weary of wandering;
Tired of wild, uncertain lands, strange faces, faint hands.
Has the wondrous world gone cold? Am I growing old, old?
Grey and weary . . . let me dream, glide on the tranquil stream.
Oh, what joyous days I’ve had, full, fervid, gay, glad!
Yet there comes a subtile change, let the stripling rove, range.
From sweet roving comes sweet rest, after all, home’s best.
And if there’s a little bit of woman-love with it,
I will count my life content, God-blest and well spent. . . .
Oh but it is good to be
Foot-loose and heart-free!
Yet how good it is to come
Home at last, home, home!