ROBERT W SERVICE

The Cremation of Sam McGee

The Shooting of Dan McGrew

The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill

The Spell of the Yukon

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.

A bunch of the boys were whooping it 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 fifty below,
  And into the din and the glare,
There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks,
  Dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.
He looked like a man with a foot in the grave
  And scarcely the strength of a louse,
Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar,
  And he called for drinks for the house.
There was none could place the stranger's face,
  Though we searched ourselves for a clue;
But we drank his health, and the last to drink
  Was Dangerous Dan McGrew.

There's men that somehow just grip your eyes,
  And hold them hard like a spell;
And such was he, and he looked to me
  Like a man who had lived in hell;
With a face most hair, and the dreary stare
  Of a dog whose day is done,
As he watered the green stuff in his glass,
  And the drops fell one by one.
Then I got to figgering who he was,
  And wondering what he'd do,
And I turned my head -- 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 daze,
Till at last that old piano fell
  In the way of his wandering gaze.
The rag-time kid was having a drink;
  There was no one else on the stool,
So the stranger stumbles across the room,
  And flops down there like a fool.
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt
  He sat, and I saw him sway;
Then he clutched the keys with his talon hands --
  My God! but that man could play.

Were you ever out in the Great Alone,
  When the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in
  With a silence you most could HEAR;
With only the howl of a timber wolf,
  And you camped there in the cold,
A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world,
  Clean mad for the muck called gold;
While high overhead, green, yellow and red,
  The North Lights swept in bars? --
Then you've a hunch what the music meant . . .
  Hunger and night and the stars.

And hunger not of the belly kind,
  That's banished with bacon and beans,
But the gnawing hunger of lonely men
  For a home and all that it 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's love --
A woman dearer than all the world,
  And true as Heaven is true --
(God! how ghastly she looks through her rouge, --
  The lady that's known as Lou.)

Then on a sudden the music changed,
  So soft that you scarce could hear;
But you felt that your life had been looted clean
  Of all that it once held dear;
That someone had stolen the woman you loved;
  That her love 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 heart's despair,
  And it thrilled you through and through --
"I guess I'll make it a spread misere,"
  Said Dangerous Dan McGrew.

The music almost died away . . .
  Then it burst like a pent-up flood;
And it seemed to say, "Repay, repay,"
  And my eyes were blind with blood.
The thought came back of an ancient wrong,
  And it stung like a frozen lash,
And the lust awoke to kill, to kill . . .
  Then the music stopped with a crash,
And the stranger turned, and his eyes they burned
  In a most peculiar way;
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt
  He sat, and I saw him sway;
Then his lips went in in a kind of grin,
  And he spoke, and his voice was calm,
And "Boys," says he, "you don't know me,
  And none of you care a damn;
But I want to state, and my words are straight,
  And I'll bet my poke they're true,
That one of you is a hound of hell . . .
  and that one is Dan McGrew."

Then I ducked my head, and the lights went out,
  And two guns blazed in the dark,
And a woman screamed, and the lights went up,
  And two men lay stiff 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'm not denying it's so.
I'm not so wise as the lawyer guys,
  But strictly between us two --
The woman that kissed him and -- pinched his poke --
  Was the lady that's known as Lou.

I took a contract to bury the body
  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 dive,
  Mucklucks or patent shoon;
On velvet tundra or virgin peak,
  By glacier, drift or draw;
In muskeg hollow or canyon gloom,
  By avalanche, fang or claw;
By battle, murder or sudden wealth,
  By pestilence, hooch or lead --
I swore on the Book I would follow and look
  Till I found my tombless dead.

For Bill was a dainty 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 matter a damn
So 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 same I blowed in that very night
  Down in the Tenderloin).
Then I painted a three-foot slab of pine:
  "Here lies poor Bill MacKie",
And I hung it up on my cabin wall
  And I waited for Bill to die.

Years passed away, and at last one day
  Came a squaw with a story strange,
Of a long-deserted line of traps
  'Way back of the Bighorn range;
Of a little hut by the great divide,
  And a white man stiff and still,
Lying there by his lonesome self,
  And I figured it 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.

You know what it's like in the Yukon wild
  When it's sixty-nine below;
When the ice-worms wriggle their purple heads
  Through the crust of the pale blue snow;
When the pine-trees crack like little guns
  In the silence of the wood,
And the icicles hang down like tusks
  Under the parka hood;
When the stove-pipe smoke breaks sudden off,
  And the sky is weirdly lit,
And the careless feel of a bit of steel
  Burns like a red-hot spit;
When the mercury is a frozen ball,
  And the frost-fiend stalks to kill --
Well, it was just like that that day when I
  Set out to look for Bill.

Oh, the awful hush that seemed to crush
  Me down on every hand,
As I blundered blind with a trail to find
  Through that blank and bitter land;
Half dazed, 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!
North by the compass, North I pressed;
  River and peak and plain
Passed like a dream I slept to lose
  And I waked to dream again.

River and plain and mighty peak --
  And who could stand unawed?
As their summits blazed, he could stand undazed
  At the foot of the throne of God.
North, aye, 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 cabin squat,
  Built in the side of a hill,
And I burst in the door, and there on the floor,
  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 man's chest,
  Glittering ice in his hair,
Ice on his fingers, ice in his heart,
  Ice in his glassy stare;
Hard as 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 last I spoke: "Bill liked his joke;
  But still, goldarn his eyes,
A man had ought to consider his mates
  In the way he goes and dies."

Have you ever stood in an Arctic hut
  In the shadow of the Pole,
With a little coffin six by three
  And a grief you can't control?
Have you ever sat by a frozen corpse
  That looks at you with a grin,
And that seems to say: "You may try all day,
  But you'll never jam me in"?
I'm not a man of the quitting kind,
  But I never felt so blue
As I sat there gazing at that stiff
  And studying what I'd do.
Then I rose and I kicked off the husky dogs
  That were nosing round about,
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 arms and legs stuck out like pegs,
  As if they was made of wood.
Till at last I said: "It ain't no use --
  He's froze too hard to thaw;
He's obstinate, and he won't lie straight,
  So I guess I got to -- saw."
So I sawed off poor Bill's arms and legs,
  And I laid him snug and straight
In the little coffin he picked hisself,
  With the dinky silver plate;
And I came nigh near to shedding a tear
  As I nailed him safely down;
Then I stowed him away in my Yukon sleigh,
  And I started back to town.

So I buried him as the contract was
  In a narrow grave and deep,
And there he's 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 often think of poor old Bill --
  And how hard he was to saw.

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.

No! 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;
  The sunshiny woods all athrill;
The grayling aleap in the river,
  The bighorn asleep on the hill.
Th strong life that never knows harness;
  The wilds where the caribou call;
The 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 God! 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.

There'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.

Oh, the North Countree is a hard countree
That mothers a bloody brood;
And its icy arms hold hidden charms
For the greedy, the sinful and lewd.
And strong 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.

Now Jacob Kaime was the Hermit's name
In the days of his pious youth,
Ere he cast a smirch on the Baptist Church
By betraying a girl named Ruth.
But 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 fell for the gold 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 but honest child.
He longed for the bite of a Yukon night
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 along in the slush
With a team of husky hounds,
And to fire his gat at a beaver hat
And knock it out of bounds.

So he left his home for the hell-town Nome,
On Alaska's ice-ribbed shores,
And he learned to curse and to drink (and worse)
Till the rum dripped from his pores
When the boys on a spree were drinking it free
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 melody,
And the barkeep vowed to the hard-boiled crowd
That he'd cremate Sam McGee,
Then Jacob Kaime (who had taken the name
Of Yukon Jake, the Killer)
Would rake the dive with his forty-five
Till the atmosphere grew chiller.
With a sharp command he'd make 'em stand
And deliver their hard-earned dust,
Then drink the bar dry of rum and rye,
As a Klondike bully must.
Without coming to blows he would tweak the nose
Of Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And, becoming bolder, throw over his shoulder
The lady that's known as Lou.

Oh, tough as a steak was Yukon Jake,
Hard-boiled as 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 by 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 by himself on a sea lion's shelf
In lonely iniquity.

But, 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 save those sinful birds.
So, two weeks later, she took a freighter
For the gold-cursed land near the Pole,
But Heaven ain't made for a lass betrayed;
She was wrecked on Shark-Tooth Shoal!

All hands were tossed in the Sea and lost --
All but the maiden Ruth,
Who swam to the edge of the sea lion's ledge
Where abode the love 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 eat,
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 it felt like a chestnut burr,
And he swore by his gizzard and the Arctic blizzard
That he'd do right by her.
But the cold sweat froze on the end of her nose
Till it gleamed like a Tecla pearl,
While her bright hair fell like a flame from hell
Down the back of the grateful girl.
But a hopeless rake was Yukon Jake,
The Hermit of Shark-Tooth 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 dog and some hot eggnog,
As rascals are wont to do.
Now ruthless Ruth is a maid uncouth
With scarlet cheeks and lips,
And she sings rough songs to the drunken throngs
That come from the sealing ships.
For a rouge-stained kiss from this infamous miss
They will give a seal's 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 brood;
And its icy arms hold hidden charms
For the greedy, the sinful and lewd.
And strong 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!