Robert W Service We Had Him Before and We Will Have Him Again
Robert William Service
In that location are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gilt;
The Arctic trails accept their underground tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights take seen queer sights,
Merely the queerest they e'er did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee,
where the cotton fiber blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam
'round the Pole, God but knows.
He was e'er 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 Twenty-four hour period we were mushing our way
over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your common cold! through the parka's fold
information technology stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd shut, then the lashes froze
till sometimes nosotros couldn't meet;
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 snowfall,
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 greenbacks in this trip, I gauge;
And if I practise, I'k request that you
won't refuse my terminal request."
Well, he seemed and so low that I couldn't say no;
then he says with a sort of moan:
"It'southward the cursed cold, and it'south got right hold
till I'm chilled make clean through to the os.
Withal 'tain't beingness dead -- it's my atrocious dread
of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair,
y'all'll cremate my last remains."
A pal's last need is a thing to mind,
so I swore I would non neglect;
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.
In that location wasn't a breath in that land of death,
and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't become rid,
because of a hope given;
Information technology was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say:
"You may revenue enhancement your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you lot
to cremate those concluding remains."
At present a promise made is a debt unpaid,
and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were impaired,
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 mean solar day that quiet dirt
seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent
and the chow was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad,
but I swore I would non give in;
And I'd often sing to the hateful thing,
and it hearkened with a smiling.
Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge,
and a derelict in that location lay;
It was jammed in the water ice, but I saw in a trice
it was called the "Alice May".
And I looked at it, and I thought a scrap,
and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then "Hither," said I, with a sudden cry,
"is my cre-ma-tor-eum."
Some planks I tore from the motel floor,
and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around,
and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames only soared, and the furnace roared --
such a bonfire you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal,
and I stuffed in Sam McGee.
So I made a hike, for I didn't like
to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled,
and the current of air began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled
down my cheeks, and I don't know why;
And the greasy fume in an inky cloak
went streaking down the sky.
I exercise not know how long in the snow
I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced nearly
ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said:
"I'll just take a peep within.
I guess he'south cooked, and it'southward time I looked"; . . .
then the door I opened wide.
And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm,
in the center 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, simply I greatly fear
you'll allow in the cold and storm --
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee,
information technology's the first time I've been warm."
There are strange things washed in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their undercover tales
That would brand your blood run common cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they e'er did see
Was that dark on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee. 
Back
TO TOP
Robert William Service
A bunch of the boys were whooping information technology up
In the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box
Was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game,
Sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o'-love,
The lady that's known as Lou.
When out of the night, which was 50 below,
And into the din and the glare,
There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks,
Dog-dirty, and loaded for carry.
He looked like a human being with a human foot in the grave
And scarcely the strength of a louse,
Yet he tilted a poke of grit on the bar,
And he called for drinks for the firm.
There was none could place the stranger'southward face,
Though we searched ourselves for a clue;
But nosotros drank his health, and the last to drink
Was Unsafe Dan McGrew.
There's men that somehow just grip your eyes,
And hold them hard similar a spell;
And such was he, and he looked to me
Like a man who had lived in hell;
With a face up well-nigh hair, and the dreary stare
Of a canis familiaris whose twenty-four hours is done,
As he watered the green stuff in his glass,
And the drops roughshod one by one.
And then I got to figgering who he was,
And wondering what he'd do,
And I turned my caput -- and there watching him
Was the lady that's known as Lou.
His eyes went rubbering round the room,
And he seemed in a kind of stupor,
Till at last that former piano vicious
In the mode of his wandering gaze.
The rag-time kid was having a drink;
There was no 1 else on the stool,
So the stranger stumbles across the room,
And flops down there similar a fool.
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt
He sat, and I saw him sway;
So he clutched the keys with his talon hands --
My God! only that human being could play.
Were yous always out in the Peachy Solitary,
When the moon was atrocious clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in
With a silence you lot near could HEAR;
With only the howl of a timber wolf,
And y'all camped there in the cold,
A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world,
Clean mad for the muck chosen gold;
While high overhead, green, yellowish and red,
The North Lights swept in bars? --
Then y'all've a hunch what the music meant . . .
Hunger and dark and the stars.
And hunger not of the belly kind,
That's banished with salary and beans,
But the gnawing hunger of lonely men
For a abode and all that information technology means;
For a fireside far from the cares that are,
Four walls and a roof above;
But oh! so cramful of cosy joy,
And crowned with a woman'due south honey --
A adult female dearer than all the earth,
And truthful as Heaven is true --
(God! how ghastly she looks through her rouge, --
The lady that's known equally Lou.)
Then on a sudden the music changed,
And so soft that you scarce could hear;
But you lot felt that your life had been looted clean
Of all that it once held dear;
That someone had stolen the woman yous loved;
That her beloved was a devil's lie;
That your guts were gone, and the best for you
Was to crawl away and die.
'Twas the crowning cry of a eye'due south despair,
And it thrilled y'all through and through --
"I judge I'll brand it a spread misere,"
Said Unsafe Dan McGrew.
The music almost died away . . .
Then it flare-up like a pent-up flood;
And information technology seemed to say, "Repay, repay,"
And my optics were blind with blood.
The idea came back of an ancient incorrect,
And it stung similar a frozen lash,
And the lust awoke to kill, to kill . . .
Then the music stopped with a crash,
And the stranger turned, and his optics they burned
In a most peculiar style;
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt
He sat, and I saw him sway;
So his lips went in in a kind of smiling,
And he spoke, and his voice was at-home,
And "Boys," says he, "you don't know me,
And none of you intendance a damn;
Only I want to country, and my words are direct,
And I'll bet my poke they're true,
That one of you is a hound of hell . . .
and that one is Dan McGrew."
And so I ducked my caput, and the lights went out,
And two guns blazed in the dark,
And a adult female screamed, and the lights went up,
And two men lay strong and stark.
Pitched on his head, and pumped full of lead,
Was Dangerous Dan McGrew,
While the man from the creeks lay clutched to the breast
Of the lady that's known as Lou.
These are the simple facts of the case,
And I guess I ought to know.
They say that the stranger was crazed with "hooch",
And I'one thousand non denying it's so.
I'm not so wise as the lawyer guys,
But strictly between us 2 --
The woman that kissed him and -- pinched his poke --
Was the lady that's known as Lou.
BACK
TO Summit
Robert William Service
I took a contract to bury the trunk
Of blasphemous Bill MacKie,
Whenever, wherever or whatsoever
The manner of death he die --
Whether he die in the light o' day
Or under the peak-faced moon;
In cabin or dance-hall, camp or swoop,
Mucklucks or patent shoon;
On velvet tundra or virgin peak,
By glacier, drift or depict;
In muskeg hollow or canyon gloom,
By avalanche, fang or claw;
By battle, murder or sudden wealth,
Past pestilence, hooch or lead --
I swore on the Book I would follow and look
Till I found my tombless dead.
For Bill was a prissy kind of cuss,
And his mind was mighty sot
On a dinky patch with flowers and grass
In a civilized bone-yard lot.
And where he died or how he died,
It didn't thing a damn
And then long as he had a grave with frills
And a tombstone "epigram".
So I promised him, and he paid the price
In good cheechako coin
(Which the aforementioned I blowed in that very night
Downwardly in the Tenderloin).
Then I painted a three-foot slab of pino:
"Here lies poor Bill MacKie",
And I hung it up on my cabin wall
And I waited for Bill to dice.
Years passed away, and at final 1 mean solar day
Came a squaw with a story strange,
Of a long-deserted line of traps
'Way dorsum of the Bighorn range;
Of a little hut past the keen divide,
And a white homo stiff and all the same,
Lying in that location by his lonesome self,
And I figured information technology must be Bill.
So I thought of the contract I'd made with him,
And I took down from the shelf
The swell black box with the silver plate
He'd picked out for hisself;
And I packed it full of grub and "hooch",
And I slung it on the sleigh;
Then I harnessed up my team of dogs
And was off at dawn of day.
Y'all know what it's like in the Yukon wild
When it's threescore-nine below;
When the ice-worms wriggle their imperial heads
Through the crust of the stake bluish snow;
When the pino-trees cleft like piddling guns
In the silence of the wood,
And the icicles hang down like tusks
Under the parka hood;
When the stove-pipage smoke breaks sudden off,
And the heaven is weirdly lit,
And the careless experience of a bit of steel
Burns like a cherry-red-hot spit;
When the mercury is a frozen ball,
And the frost-fiend stalks to kill --
Well, it was but like that that twenty-four hour period when I
Set out to await for Beak.
Oh, the atrocious hush that seemed to trounce
Me downward on every hand,
As I blundered blind with a trail to discover
Through that bare and bitter land;
Half mazed, half crazed in the winter wild,
With its grim heart-breaking woes,
And the ruthless strife for a grip on life
That only the sourdough knows!
Northward past the compass, Northward I pressed;
River and pinnacle and plain
Passed like a dream I slept to lose
And I waked to dream once more.
River and evidently and mighty peak --
And who could stand unawed?
Every bit their summits blazed, he could stand undazed
At the foot of the throne of God.
North, yep, North, through a land accurst,
Shunned by the scouring brutes,
And all I heard was my own harsh word
And the whine of the malamutes,
Till at last I came to a motel squat,
Congenital in the side of a hill,
And I burst in the door, and at that place on the flooring,
Frozen to death, lay Bill.
Ice, white ice, like a winding-sheet,
Sheathing each smoke-grimed wall;
Ice on the stove-pipe, ice on the bed,
Ice gleaming over all;
Sparkling ice on the dead homo's breast,
Glittering ice in his pilus,
Ice on his fingers, ice in his heart,
Ice in his glassy stare;
Hard every bit a log and trussed like a frog,
With his arms and legs outspread.
I gazed at the coffin I'd brought for him,
And I gazed at the gruesome dead,
And at concluding I spoke: "Bill liked his joke;
But all the same, goldarn his eyes,
A human being had ought to consider his mates
In the way he goes and dies."
Accept you ever stood in an Arctic hut
In the shadow of the Pole,
With a little coffin vi by three
And a grief you can't control?
Have you always sat past a frozen corpse
That looks at y'all with a grin,
And that seems to say: "You lot may try all day,
But you'll never jam me in"?
I'1000 non a human being of the quitting kind,
Merely I never felt so blue
As I sat in that location gazing at that strong
And studying what I'd practise.
So I rose and I kicked off the husky dogs
That were nosing round nearly,
And I lit a roaring fire in the stove,
And I started to thaw Bill out.
Well, I thawed and thawed for thirteen days,
But it didn't seem no good;
His artillery and legs stuck out similar pegs,
Equally if they was made of wood.
Till at last I said: "It ain't no use --
He'due south froze too hard to thaw;
He's obstinate, and he won't lie straight,
So I judge I got to -- saw."
And then I sawed off poor Bill's arms and legs,
And I laid him snug and direct
In the petty coffin he picked hisself,
With the dinky argent plate;
And I came almost virtually to shedding a tear
As I nailed him safely downwards;
And then I stowed him away in my Yukon sleigh,
And I started back to boondocks.
So I buried him as the contract was
In a narrow grave and deep,
And there he'south waiting the Great Clean-up,
When the Judgment sluice-heads sweep;
And I smoke my pipe and I meditate
In the light of the Midnight Sun,
And sometimes I wonder if they was,
The awful things I done.
And as I sit and the parson talks,
Expounding of the Law,
I oftentimes call back of poor quondam Bill --
And how hard he was to saw.
BACK
TO TOP
Robert William Service
I wanted the gilded, and I sought it;
I scrabbled and mucked similar a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy -- I fought information technology;
I hurled my youth into a grave.
I wanted the gold, and I got it --
Came out with a fortune final fall --
Nevertheless somehow life'southward non what I thought it,
And somehow the golden isn't all.
No! There'south the land. (Have you seen it?)
It's the cussedest state 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 information technology,
Some say information technology'due south a fine land to shun;
Maybe; merely there's some equally would trade it
For no land on world -- and I'm one.
You come to get rich (damned good reason);
Yous feel like an exile at first;
Y'all detest it like hell for a season,
So you are worse than the worst.
It grips yous like some kinds of sinning,
It twists y'all from foe to a friend;
It seems information technology's been since the get-go,
It seems information technology volition be to the finish.
I've stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow
That'due south plumb-full of hush to the brim;
I've watched the big, husky lord's day 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 globe piled on pinnacle.
The summertime -- no sweeter was e'er;
The sunshiny woods all athrill;
The grayling aleap in the river,
The bighorn asleep on the colina.
Th strong life that never knows harness;
The wilds where the caribou call;
The freshness, the freedom, the faress
0 God! how I'k stuck on it all.
The winter! the brightness that blinds you,
The white land locked tight as a drum,
The cold fearfulness that follows and finds you,
Tle silence that bludgeons you dumb.
The snows that are older than history,
Tle forest where the weird shadows camber;
The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery,
I've bade 'em proficient-farewell -- but I can't.
At that place's a land where the mountains are nameless,
And the rivers all run God knows where;
There are lives that are erring and bumming,
And deaths that just hang by a hair;
In that location are hardships that nobody reckons;
At that place are valleys unpeopled and still,
There'due south a country -- oh, information technology beckons and beckons,
And I desire to get back -- and I will.
They're making my coin diminish;
I'm sick of the sense of taste of champagne.
Thank God! when I'm skinned to a finish
I'll pike to the Yukon again.
I'll fight -- and you bet information technology's no sham-fight;
Information technology'due south hell! -- but I've been there earlier;
And it'southward better than this past a damsite --
So me for the Yukon again.
There's golden, and information technology's haunting and haunting;
It'south luring me on every bit of old;
Nevertheless it isn't the gold that I'm wanting
And then much as merely finding the gold.
It's the great, big, wide land 'way up yonder,
It'south the forests where silence has lease;
It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
Information technology'south the stillness that fills me with peace.
Dorsum
TO Peak
Edward Eastward Paramore, Jr
(with apologies to Robert Service)
Oh, the Northward Countree is a hard countree
That mothers a bloody brood;
And its icy arms concur hidden charms
For the greedy, the sinful and lewd.
And stiff men rust from the gold and the lust
That sears the Northland soul,
Merely the wickedest born from the Pole to the Horn,
Was the Hermit of Shark-Tooth Shoal.
At present Jacob Kaime was the Hermit's proper name
In the days of his pious youth,
Ere he bandage a smirch on the Baptist Church
By betraying a girl named Ruth.
Simply now men quake at "Yukon Jake,
The Hermit of Shark-Tooth Shoal",
For that is the name that Jacob Kaime
Is known by from Nome to the Pole.
He was just a boy and the parson's joy
Ere he brutal for the aureate and the muck,
And had learned to pray, with the hogs and the hay
On a farm near Keokuk.
But a Service tale of illicit kale,
And whisky and women wild,
Drained the morals clean as a soup tureen
From this poor just honest child.
He longed for the bite of a Yukon dark
And the Northern Light's weird flicker,
Or a game of stud in the frozen mud,
And the taste of raw red likker.
He wanted to mush forth in the slush
With a team of husky hounds,
And to burn his gat at a beaver hat
And knock it out of bounds.
And then he left his home for the hell-town Nome,
On Alaska's ice-ribbed shores,
And he learned to curse and to potable (and worse)
Till the rum dripped from his pores
When the boys on a spree were drinking information technology gratuitous
In the Malemute saloon,
And Dan McGrew and his dangerous crew
Shot craps with the piebald coon.
When the Kid on his stool banged away like a fool
At a jag-time tune,
And the barkeep vowed to the hard-boiled oversupply
That he'd cremate Sam McGee,
Then Jacob Kaime (who had taken the proper name
Of Yukon Jake, the Killer)
Would rake the dive with his 40-five
Till the atmosphere grew chiller.
With a sharp command he'd make 'em stand
And deliver their hard-earned grit,
Then potable the bar dry out of rum and rye,
Equally a Klondike bully must.
Without coming to blows he would tweak the olfactory organ
Of Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And, becoming bolder, throw over his shoulder
The lady that'southward known as Lou.
Oh, tough as a steak was Yukon Jake,
Hard-boiled equally a picnic egg.
He washed his shirt in the Klondike dirt,
And drank his rum by the keg.
In fear of their lives (or because of their wives)
He was shunned past the best of his pals,
An outcast he from the comraderie
Of all but wild animals.
So he bought him the whole of Shark-Tooth Shoal,
A reef in the Bering Sea,
And he lived past himself on a body of water panthera leo's shelf
In lonely iniquity.
Just, miles away, in Keokuk, Ia.,
Did a ruined maiden fight
To remove the smirch from the Baptist Church
By bringing the heathen Light;
And the Elders declared that all would be spared
If she carried the holy words
From her Keokuk home to the hell-town Nome
To relieve those sinful birds.
So, ii weeks later, she took a freighter
For the gilded-cursed land near the Pole,
Merely Heaven own't fabricated for a lass betrayed;
She was wrecked on Shark-Tooth Shoal!
All easily were tossed in the Ocean and lost --
All but the maiden Ruth,
Who swam to the edge of the bounding main panthera leo's ledge
Where dwelling house the beloved of her youth.
He was hunting a seal for his evening meal
(He handled a mean harpoon)
When he saw at his feet not something to consume,
But a girl in a frozen swoon
Whom he dragged to his lair by her dripping hair,
And he rubbed her knees with gin.
To his great surprise, she opened her eyes
And revealed his Original Sin!
His eight-months beard grew stiff and weird,
And information technology felt like a chestnut burr,
And he swore by his gizzard and the Chill blizzard
That he'd practise right by her.
Only the common cold sweat froze on the terminate of her nose
Till information technology gleamed like a Tecla pearl,
While her brilliant hair savage like a flame from hell
Downwards the back of the grateful daughter.
But a hopeless rake was Yukon Jake,
The Hermit of Shark-Molar Shoal!
And the dizzy maid he rebetrayed
And wrecked her immortal soul!
Then he rowed her ashore, with a broken oar,
And he sold her to Dan McGrew
For a husky domestic dog and some hot eggnog,
As rascals are wont to do.
Now ruthless Ruth is a maid uncouth
With blood-red cheeks and lips,
And she sings rough songs to the drunken throngs
That come from the sealing ships.
For a rouge-stained buss from this infamous miss
They volition give a seal'due south sleek fur,
Or perhaps a sable, if they are able;
It's much the same to her.
Oh, the North Countree is a rough countree,
That mothers a bloody breed;
And its icy artillery agree hidden charms
For the greedy, the sinful and lewd.
And stiff men rust, from the gold and the lust
That sears the Northland soul,
But the wickedest born from the Pole to the Horn
Was the Hermit of Shark-Tooth Shoal!
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