Robert W. Service
I’ve tinkered at my bits of rhymes
In weary, woeful, waiting times;
In doleful hours of battle-din,
Ere yet they brought the wounded in;
Through vigils of the fateful night,
In lousy barns by candle-light;
In dug-outs, sagging and aflood,
On stretchers stiff and bleared with blood;
By ragged grove, by ruined road,
By hearths accurst where Love abode;
By broken altars, blackened shrines
I’ve tinkered at my bits of rhymes.
I’ve solaced me with scraps of song
The desolated ways along:
Through sickly fields all shrapnel-sown,
And meadows reaped by death alone;
By blazing cross and splintered spire,
By headless Virgin in the mire;
By gardens gashed amid their bloom,
By gutted grave, by shattered tomb;
Beside the dying and the dead,
Where rocket green and rocket red,
In trembling pools of poising light,
With flowers of flame festoon the night.
Ah me! by what dark ways of wrong
I’ve cheered my heart with scraps of song.
So here’s my sheaf of war-won verse,
And some is bad, and some is worse.
And if at times I curse a bit,
You needn’t read that part of it;
For through it all like horror runs
The red resentment of the guns.
And you yourself would mutter when
You took the things that once were men,
And sped them through that zone of hate
To where the dripping surgeons wait;
And wonder too if in God’s sight
War ever, ever can be right.
Yet may it not be, crime and war
But effort misdirected are?
And if there’s good in war and crime,
There may be in my bits of rhyme,
My songs from out the slaughter mill:
So take or leave them as you will.
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Analysis (AI Assisted)
This poem digs into the strange relationship between war and poetry, how the writer clings to words in the middle of chaos. It’s raw and grounded, not trying to impress, just to get something out. The rhymes aren’t polished or pretty on purpose—they feel jagged, like the experiences they come from.
The first stanza sets the tone. It lists all the places and situations where the poet scratched out rhymes: barns, dugouts, bloodied stretchers, ruins. You get the sense that writing is both a habit and a lifeline, something to do in the middle of misery. The repetition of “by”—by grove, by road, by altar—hammers home the idea that war seeps into everything. There’s no escape from it, but there’s also no stopping the urge to create, even in such awful places.
The second stanza is darker, though. The imagery shifts to fields “reaped by death,” headless statues, smashed gardens. The poet doesn’t soften any of it, which gives the whole thing a kind of bleak honesty. There’s a rhythm to the destruction, almost like he’s cataloging it while trying to stay sane. The mention of rockets lighting up the night—normally something celebratory—gets twisted into this eerie beauty. The “flowers of flame” aren’t hopeful; they’re reminders of how warped everything has become.
By the time the third stanza rolls around, you get the full weight of the poet’s exhaustion. He knows some of his work is bad, maybe most of it, but he doesn’t care. That’s not the point. He curses, doubts God, wonders if anything about war could ever be justified. The line about “the things that once were men” is one of the hardest-hitting in the whole piece. It doesn’t get graphic, but it’s impossible to miss the horror behind it.
And then the poem turns toward something like resignation—or maybe just acceptance. The poet admits war and crime might be “effort misdirected” and suggests that even his flawed rhymes might have value, though he’s not trying to convince anyone of it. There’s no big conclusion, no demand for action or change. Just a shrug: take or leave it. It’s brutally honest, which makes it hit harder.
This isn’t a poem trying to make sense of war; it’s just trying to survive it. That’s where its strength lies—not in offering answers but in showing how someone might cope when everything else falls apart. The rhymes and rhythm might seem simple, but they’re heavy with experience, which makes them stick with you. It’s not about being pretty—it’s about being real.