The Men Who Don't Fit In

The Men Who Don't Fit In*

Robert W. Service

This is a poem by Robert W. Service that I think fits the way that Christ led his life up until his death.  I italicized the lines that I feel brought an especially powerful resemblance to Chris' story.

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. - This is where I feel Service diverges from Chris' story a bit.
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 think that Chris had that bit of gypsy blood in him and that he was drawn to new experiences, but I feel that Chris never had the regrets that the man in the end of the poem had.  The key differents between Chris and the man in the poem is that Chris loved to roam, but he also did it deliberately.  Service makes it seem as if the man in his poem had no choice in his destiny.  I also see Chris as much more enlightened about how connected everyone is to each other.  Of course, Service died almost forty years befor Chris did, and the world was different back then than it was for Chris,  but when reading about Chris and his story, this poem always popped up in my mind.