Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses
    The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses
    The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses
    Ebook82 pages1 hour

    The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses

    By Robert W. Service

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    This antiquarian volume contains a collection of some of Robert William Service's most influential and esteemed poetry, including 'The Shooting of Dan McGrew' and 'The Cremation of Sam McGee'. This wonderful collection constitutes a must-have for fans and collectors of Service's work, and would make for a worthy addition to anyone's bookshelf. The chapters of this book included: 'The Land God Forgot', 'The Spell of the Yukon', 'The Three Voices', 'The Law of the Yukon', 'The parson's Son', 'The Call of the Wild', 'The Lone Trail', 'The Pines', 'The Lure of Little Voices', 'The Song of the Wage-Slave', 'Grin', etcetera. Robert William Service (1874 – 1958) was a famous British-Canadian poet and writer, frequently referred to as "the Bard of the Yukon". This book is being republished now in an affordable, modern edition - complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateMay 31, 2013
    ISBN9781473389113
    Author

    Robert W. Service

    Robert W. Service (1874-1958) was born in Preston, Lancashire, England, and came to Canada in 1895, eventually ending up in Yukon Territory in 1904, five years after the Klondike Gold Rush. His many books include the poetry collection The Songs of a Sourdough, the novel The Trail of '98, and the autobiography Ploughman of the Moon. Service later moved to France, where he died.

    Read more from Robert W. Service

    Related to The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses

    Related ebooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Creeping Techno-Horror of “The MANIAC”

      Oct 4, 2023

      It was as if those awful things had a will of their own,” says physicist Richard Feynman in Benjamín Labatut’s latest novel The MANIAC. Feynman never actually said this—or if he did, I can’t find evidence of it—but the veracity of the quote is not wh

      2 min read

    • Article

      Seeing Brightly

      Jun 29, 2021

      Each of us walks around packed with a heavy bundle of prejudices. It would take much time, patience and effort to untie this baggage and spread it out on the ground in front of us. A prejudice is a judgment that I take over from others without thinki

      2 min read

    • Article

      Gil Scott-Heron Changed My Life – And His Humane Message Still Resonates

      Oct 27, 2021

      In 1986, as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was being inaugurated in Cleveland, Ohio, I was touring Europe with the artist, poet, author and civil rights activist Gil Scott-Heron. At that time, you wouldn’t have readily associated someone like Gil wit

      4 min read

    • Article

      Richard The Radical

      Nov 26, 2020

      Richard The Radical
      10 min read

    • Article

      ‘Bitter, Gentle, Funny’: Irish Stars Unite To Celebrate Overlooked Poet Patrick Kavanagh

      Sep 18, 2022

      Patrick Kavanagh is one of Ireland’s most revered poets – a genius from a rural backwater who made the parochial universal. Yet his fame never really reached other shores. While William Butler Yeats and Seamus Heaney won Nobel prizes and were quoted

      2 min read

    • Article

      Speak, Memories

      Jun 11, 2022

      Speak, Memories
      1 min read

    • Article

      Built-in Closets

      Dec 22, 2020

      Built-in Closets
      1 min read

    • Article

      Love And Tears On The Smallholding

      Jul 29, 2021

      Love And Tears On The Smallholding
      4 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Mar 1, 2022

      I met the Bishop on the roadand much said he—same old porridgeI heard as a child, my little bodya “foul sty.” “Love has pitched his mansion.” MaybeLove pitched her silken tent.Love has raised its dwelling inthe place of reproduction, which can be fit

      3 min read

    • Article

      Aelfred’s Britain

      Jul 12, 2018

      Aelfred’s Britain
      2 min read

    • Article

      Roberto Benigni

      Aug 21, 2020

      Roberto Benigni
      2 min read

    • Article

      With A lot Of Help

      Mar 8, 2022

      With A lot Of Help
      7 min read

    • Article

      Clippings

      Feb 17, 2022

      Clippings
      4 min read

    • Article

      'Underland' Connects Us To Dazzling Worlds Beneath Our Feet

      Jun 3, 2019

      The beauty of Robert Macfarlane's writing, and of the natural world it describes, is immense. His words also act as a warning, ensuring a recognition of human harms to the environment.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Steven Erikson

      Jul 14, 2021

      Describe the room in which you typically write. I prefer to write in a café or a bar or pub. I need people around me, plenty of noise, conversations. The pandemic has obviously prevented any of that, which has affected my writing habits. The routine’

      2 min read

    • Article

      There’s No Place Like Home – If You Can Afford Bay Area Prices

      Jun 28, 2021

      A woman leaves her philandering husband in France and returns to San Francisco to relaunch her career in ‘Lorna Mott Comes Home’ by Diane Johnson.

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses

    4/5

    57 ratings5 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      I find reviewing poetry really difficult, so I don't have anything particularly brilliant to say. I loved this book a lot. It's authentic Canadian pioneer days, gold rush stuff, and it's got the meter of Scottish drinking songs. I read quite a lot of it out loud -- couldn't help it, it begs to be sung if at all possible.

      Parts are paeans to how awesome men (sic) who are strong and adventurous enough to survive life in the Yukon are and how they don't want any weaklings or cripples. Other parts are about how the Yukon will kill you, no matter how awesome you think you are. Other parts are about kissing your sweetheart goodbye and going off into the mountains for the rest of your life and all the grief you feel over causing them pain, but you're just that kind of misfit guy.

      All the women are harlots or mothers...except there are like two mentions of actual wives, who are left. And there are several mentions of the ideal life with a wife and home. And there are several depictions of the Yukon itself as feminine, almost like an earth goddess -- wife and mother and lover all together.

      The other thing I noticed was the poem about living in a city of Men, except they all had a Siwash girl, who was (according to the white male speaker) wracked with guilt over betraying her people by whoring herself out in such a way. Makes me very, very curious about that bit of women's history and how long ago it was taking place, what with the Yukon gold rush being way more recent than the Spanish colonial gold rush of the 16th-18th centuries.

      Anyway, good poems, great window on history and culture, possibly great drinking songs for western Canadians. It probably helps to have been there, which I have, so I have no trouble imagining the scenery he's describing. It's truly awe-inspiring, and I love that he goes to the sublime, God-loving place with it so often. The land is stunning and deadly, and I can only imagine it before roads and dynamite, wandering with only a sled team and a campfire.

      It reminds me of my History of the American West course. I wish there'd been more Canada in it.
    • 4/5
      My fourth grade teacher introduced me to Robert Service by reading The Cremation of Sam McGee to the class. I have been a fan of his ever since and have read most of his poetry. This book does not disappoint. It consists of 34 poems, including the Cremation of Sam McGee.
    • 5/5
      Many of the classic poems of Robert Service, including "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee" Common man rhyming poetry; Full of humor and thoughtfulness.
    • 5/5
      This is a reissue of the 1907 book published by Dodd, Mead & Company and it includes besides "The Spell of the Yukon," such poems by Robert Service as "The Shooting of Dan McGrew," "The Cremation of Sam McGee," "The Younger Son," "The Woman and the Angel," and others.
    • 5/5
      My maternal grandfather loved the poems of Robert Service. I am told that he would recite them a lot to entertainn people. His coppy of poems I beleive went to a cousin and I was unable to locate a tape of his recitaions so I just ended up buying my own copy. The poems are witty and I have a special place for them due to my granddaddy.

    Book preview

    The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses - Robert W. Service

    land,

    THE LAND GOD FORGOT

    The lonely sunsets flare forlorn

    Down valleys dreadly desolate;

    The lordly mountains soar in scorn

    As still as death, as stern as fate.

    The lonely sunsets flame and die;

    The giant valleys gulp the night;

    The monster mountains scrape the sky,

    Where eager stars are diamond-bright.

    So gaunt against the gibbous moon,

    Piercing the silence velvet-piled,

    A lone wolf howls his ancient rune—

    The fell arch-spirit of the Wild.

    O outcast land! O leper land!

    Let the lone wolf-cry all express

    The hate insensate of thy hand,

    Thy heart’s abysmal loneliness.

    THE SPELL OF THE YUKON

    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.

    The strong life that never knows harness;

    The wilds where the caribou call;

    The freshness, the freedom, the farness—

    O 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,

    The silence that bludgeons you dumb.

    The snows that are older than history,

    The woods where the weird shadows slant;

    The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery,

    I’ve bade ’em good-by—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.

    THE HEART OF THE SOURDOUGH

    There where the mighty mountains bare their fangs unto the moon,

    There where the sullen sun-dogs glare in the snow-bright, bitter noon,

    And the glacier-glutted streams sweep down at

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1