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Is it really a curse? This poem takes as axiomatic the ideas that life is a race, that winning matters, that winning involves a specific destination, and that this destination is more or less the same for everyone: but none of those premises strike me as being particularly defensible. What we are seeing in this poem is not the rambling man as he experiences his own life, but as he is seen through the eyes of a person with a very different value system.

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This is the part that's a curse. And yes it's a curse because you never build anything because you don't know what that even feels like.

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.

Yes it does sound like a value judgement made by someone who "fits in", probably after drinking several pints down the pub.

However I think the poem may be deeply ironic, given Robert W Service was probably a member of the "Lost Legion" himself:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robert-w-service

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