I rediscovered this poem recently and liked it all over again. Which is mostly noteworthy primarily because I’m not a big poetry buff.
The Men That Don’t Fit In, by Robert Service
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.
I haven’t read much Service, but if you like him, you might like Kipling too. And I know you’ve read the poems that end the chapters in The Jungle Books.
What in particular draws you to this one? Can you articulate it? I know that’s often impossible with poetry.
> What in particular draws you to this one?
Two things come to mind. First is that it’s simply a poem I indentify with. In some ways, I feel like a “man who won’t fit in”. Our culture is about pushing and striving and achieving and moving forward, and lately I’ve made a conscious decision to back away from that treadmill (or at least to dial it down to a walk). I hear about changes happening at work and think, “I could kick ass at that job” or “If I applied for that, I could make director inside of two years”. And then I have to remind myself that I’m working remotely, half-time, and there just isn’t going to be any advancement that comes with that. And for the most part, I’m very happy with that decision and know that it has been a good thing for me. But there are still moments when I have pangs and second guess it.
The other point that occurs to me is that I think the context has evolved around and beyond that poem. At the time it was written, I think the target was one of some derision. There was contempt, or at most perhaps pity for those who couldn’t slip on the harness and be one of “the steady, quiet, plodding ones”. Today, I think there’s more acceptance, and perhaps even some grudging admiration for those that refuse to “fit in” and are searching for new and challenging horizons even before they have finished with the previous one.
Both of those things make sense. Thanks.
I’m thinking that in some ways you identify with this? I’m also thinking I might look up this poet.