Over at the writers' group, Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, Mary (In the Corner of My Eye) has offered us a way to get a poem going. Choose, she suggests, the first two lines of a poem by someone whose work we admire, and use those lines to jump-start a poem of our own.
Your timing is perfect, Mary, because my brain is not in gear atallatall and my head is still stuffed up with a cold.
I decided to try one of the old-faithfuls from my youth, one of the balladeers for whom I've always had a soft spot. Their rhythms have almost always been able to get my rhythms going.
I chose the Scottish-Canadian, Robert W. Service, in part because his early works were first printed in a British Columbia newspaper, and I spent most of my life working for British Columbia newspapers.
The first two lines are Service's, the rest are mine.
*
Thy life is thine to make or mar,
To flicker feebly, or to soar, a star;
To live with honor or to die in shame,
The choice is yours, my darling, all the same.
*
Soaring means to thyself be true,
To be a star means nothing there to rue;
Living in honor means not choosing shame,
The choice is yours, my dear one, all the same.
*
You’ve been given a gift to use,
To use your talent well, and not abuse
The poetry that’s printed with your name;
The choice is yours, my daughter, all the same.
*
(This is written to an imaginary daughter, a poet-daughter I think I might have had.)
