Robert William Service - The Dauber

In stilly grove beside the sea
He mingles colours, measures space;
A bronze and breezy man is he,
Yet peace is in his face.
Behold him stand and longly stare,
Till deft of hand and deep of eye
He captures on a canvas square
The joy of earth and sky.

Aloof from servitude and strife,
From carking care and greed apart,
Beneath the blue he lives his life
Of Nature and of Art.
He grieves his pictures must be sold,
Aye, even when his funds are low,
And fat men pay a purse of gold
He sighs to see them go.

My loving toil is of the pen,
Yet while my verse is not unread,
His pictures will be living when
My tropes are dim and dead.
God gives us talents great and small,
And though my rhymes I'll never rue,
Sometimes I wish that after all
I were a dauber too.

Robert William Service

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