Robert Service (1874-1958)

You could turn your nose up at Robert Service and his poems. He called them verse, poetry was something other people wrote. He pads his lines, he isn’t afraid to use a cliche when it fits, and the rhythm often seems to be only on nodding terms with the sense. He’s old fashioned. Out of date. etc etc.

And this poem is haunted by the ghost of a much greater one.

But turning your nose up at Service is just silly. His poems were written to be recited, and reading them aloud is a very real pleasure.

Like ‘The Shooting of Dan Mcgrew’, the Cremation is a tightly written short story. The narrative keeps to the trajectory of folklore anecdote it’s meant to be. We’re promised a tale about something strange and unusual. A man makes a dying wish, his friend promises to grant it. He struggles to keep his promise but does. And then the tale twists, famously, at the end to keep the story teller’s initial promise.

This is taken from The Complete Poems of Robert Service, though it first appeared in ‘Songs of a Sourdough’.