POEMS BY THE WANDERING ROBERT SERVICE

The Cremation of Sam McGee

by: Robert W. Service

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee,

Where the cotton blooms and blows.

Why he left his home in the South to roam

'Round the Pole, God only knows.

He was always cold, but the land of gold

Seemed to hold him like a spell;

Though he'd often say in his homely way

That he'd "sooner live in hell".

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way

Over the Dawson trail.

Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold

It stabbed like a driven nail.

If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze

Till sometimes we couldn't see;

It wasn't much fun, but the only one

To whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight

In our robes beneath the snow,

And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead

Were dancing heel and toe,

He turned to me, and "Cap," says he,

"I'll cash in this trip, I guess;

And if I do, I'm asking that you

Won't refuse my last request."

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no;

Then he says with a sort of moan:

"It's the cursed cold, and it's got right hold

Till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.

Yet 'tain't being dead -- it's my awful dread

Of the icy grave that pains;

So I want you to swear that, foul or fair,

You'll cremate my last remains."

A pal's last need is a thing to heed,

So I swore I would not fail;

And we started on at the streak of dawn;

But God! he looked ghastly pale.

He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day

Of his home in Tennessee;

And before nightfall a corpse was all

That was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death,

And I hurried, horror-driven,

With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid,

Because of a promise given;

It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say:

"You may tax your brawn and brains,

But you promised true, and it's up to you

To cremate those last remains."

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid,

And the trail has its own stern code.

In the days to come, though my lips were dumb,

In my heart how I cursed that load.

In the long, long night, by the lone firelight,

While the huskies, round in a ring,

Howled out their woes to the homeless snows --

O God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay

Seemed to heavy and heavier grow;

And on I went, though the dogs were spent

And the grub was getting low;

The trail was bad, and I felt half mad,

But I swore I would not give in;

And I'd often sing to the hateful thing,

And it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge,

And a derelict there lay;

It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice

It was called the "Alice May".

And I looked at it, and I thought a bit,

And I looked at my frozen chum;

Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry,

"Is my cre-ma-tor-eum."

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor,

And I lit the boiler fire;

Some coal I found that was lying around,

And I heaped the fuel higher;

The flames just soared, and the furnace roared --

Such a blaze you seldom see;

And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal,

And I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like

To hear him sizzle so;

And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled,

And the wind began to blow.

It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled

Down my cheeks, and I don't know why;

And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak

Went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow

I wrestled with grisly fear;

But the stars came out and they danced about

Ere again I ventured near;

I was sick with dread, but I bravely said:

"I'll just take a peep inside.

I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; . . .

Then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm,

In the heart of the furnace roar;

And he wore a smile you could see a mile,

And he said: "Please close that door.

It's fine in here, but I greatly fear

You'll let in the cold and storm --

Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee,

It's the first time I've been warm."

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

I cremated Sam McGee.

The Spell of the Yukon

by: Robert W. Service

I wanted the gold, and I sought it;

I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.

Was it famine or scurvy-I fought it;

I hurled my youth into a grave.

I wanted the gold, and I got it-

Came out with a fortune last fall-

Yet somehow life's not what I thought it,

And somehow the gold isn't all.

Nol There's the land. (Have you seen it?)

It's the cussedest land that I know,

From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it

To the deep, deathlike valleys below.

Some say God was tired when He made it,

Some say it's a fine land to shun;

Maybe; but there's some as would trade it

For no land on earth-and I'm one.

You come to get rich (damned good reason);

You feel like an exile at first;

You hate it like hell for a season,

And then you are worse than the worst.

It grips you like some kinds of sinning,

It twists you from foe to a friend;

It seems it's been since the beginning,

It seems it will be to the end.

I've stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow

That's plumb-full of hush to the brim;

I've watched the big, husky sun wallow

In crimson and gold, and grow dim,

Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming,

And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop,

And I've thought that I surely was dreaming,

With the peace o' the world piled on top.

The summer-no sweeter was ever;

T'he sunshiny woods all athrill;

The grayling aleap in the river,

T'he bighorn asleep on the hill.

Tlh strong life that never knows harness;

T'he wilds where the caribou call;

T'he freshness, the freedom, the faress

0 God! how I'm stuck on it all.

The winter! the brightness that blinds you,

The white land locked tight as a drum,

The cold fear that follows and finds you,

Tle silence that bludgeons you dumb.

The snows that are older than history,

Tle woods where the weird shadows slant;

The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery,

I've bade 'em good-bye-but I can't.

There's a land where the mountains are nameless,

And the rivers all run God knows where;

There are lives that are erring and aimless,

And deaths that just hang by a hair;

There are hardships that nobody reckons;

There are valleys unpeopled and still,

There's a land-oh, it beckons and beckons,

And I want to go back-and I will.

They're making my money diminish;

I'm sick of the taste of champagne.

Thank Godl when I'm skinned to a finish

I'll pike to the Yukon again.

I'll fight-and you bet it's no sham-fight;

It's hell!-but I've been there before;

And it's better than this by a damsite-

So me for the Yukon once more.

T'here's gold, and it's haunting and haunting;

It's luring me on as of old;

Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting

So much as just finding the gold.

It's the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder,

It's the forests where silence has lease;

It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder,

It's the stillness that fills me with peace.

To the Man of the High North

by: Robert W. Service

My rhymes are rough, and often in my rhyming

I've drifted, silver-sailed, on seas of dream,

Hearing afar the bells of Elfland chiming,

Seeing the groves of Arcadie agleam.

I was the thrall of Beauty that rejoices

From peak snow-diademed to regal star;

Yet to mine aerie ever pierced the voices,

The pregnant voices of the Things That Are.

The Here, the Now, the vast Forlorn around us;

The gold-delirium, the ferine strife;

The lusts that lure us on, the hates that hound us;

Our red rags in the patch-work quilt of Life.

The nameless men who nameless rivers travel,

And in strange valleys greet strange deaths alone;

The grim, intrepid ones who would unravel

The mysteries that shroud the Polar Zone.

These will I sing, and if one of you linger

Over my pages in the Long, Long Night,

And on some lone line lay a calloused finger,

Saying: "It's human-true--it hits me right";

Then will I count this loving toil well spent;

Then will I dream awhile--content, content.

The Men that Don't Fit In

by: Robert W. 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.

A Rolling Stone

by: Robert W. Service

There's sunshine in the heart of me,

My blood sings in the breeze;

The mountains are a part of me,

I'm fellow to the trees.

My golden youth I'm squandering,

Sun-libertine am I;

A-wandering, a-wandering,

Until the day I die.

I was once, I declare, a Stone-Age man,

And I roomed in the cool of a cave;

I have known, I will swear, in a new life-span,

The fret and the sweat of a slave:

For far over all that folks hold worth,

There lives and there leaps in me

A love of the lowly things of earth,

And a passion to be free.

To pitch my tent with no prosy plan,

To range and to change at will;

To mock at the mastership of man,

To seek Adventure's thrill.

Carefree to be, as a bird that sings;

To go my own sweet way;

To reck not at all what may befall,

But to live and to love each day.

To make my body a temple pure

Wherein I dwell serene;

To care for the things that shall endure,

The simple, sweet and clean.

To oust out envy and hate and rage,

To breathe with no alarm;

For Nature shall be my anchorage,

And none shall do me harm.

To shun all lures that debauch the soul,

The orgied rites of the rich;

To eat my crust as a rover must

With the rough-neck down in the ditch.

To trudge by his side whate'er betide;

To share his fire at night;

To call him friend to the long trail-end,

And to read his heart aright.

To scorn all strife, and to view all life

With the curious eyes of a child;

From the plangent sea to the prairie,

From the slum to the heart of the Wild.

From the red-rimmed star to the speck of sand,

From the vast to the greatly small;

For I know that the whole for good is planned,

And I want to see it all.

To see it all, the wide world-way,

From the fig-leaf belt to the Pole;

With never a one to say me nay,

And none to cramp my soul.

In belly-pinch I will pay the price,

But God! let me be free;

For once I know in the long ago,

They made a slave of me.

In a flannel shirt from earth's clean dirt,

Here, pal, is my calloused hand!

Oh, I love each day as a rover may,

Nor seek to understand.

To ENJOY is good enough for me;

The gipsy of God am I;

Then here's a hail to each flaring dawn!

And here's a cheer to the night that's gone!

And may I go a-roaming on

Until the day I die!

Then every star shall sing to me

Its song of liberty;

And every morn shall bring to me

Its mandate to be free.

In every throbbing vein of me

I'll feel the vast Earth-call;

O body, heart and brain of me

Praise Him who made it all!