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    The Spell of the Yukon and Other Poems
    The Spell of the Yukon and Other Poems
    The Spell of the Yukon and Other Poems
    Ebook93 pages48 minutes

    The Spell of the Yukon and Other Poems

    By Robert Service

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    About this ebook

    "There are strange things done in the midnight sun," declared Robert Service as he related the fulfillment of a dying prospector's request. "The Cremation of Sam McGee" was based on one of many peculiar tales he heard upon his 1904 arrival in the Canadian frontier town of Whitehorse. Less than a decade after the Klondike gold rush, many natives and transplants remained to tell stories of the boom towns that sprang up with the sudden influx of miners, gamblers, barflies, and other fortune-seekers. Service's compelling verses — populated by One-Eyed Mike, Dangerous Dan McGrew, and other colorful characters — recapture the era's venturesome spirit and vitality.
    In this, his best-remembered work, the "common man's poet" and "Canadian Kipling" presents thirty-four verses that celebrate the rugged natural beauty of the frozen North and the warm humanity of its denizens. Verses include "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" ("A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon"), "The Heart of the Sourdough" ("There where the mighty mountains bare their fangs unto the moon"), and "The Call of the Wild" (Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there's nothing else to gaze on"). Generations have fallen under the spell of these poems, which continue to enchant readers of all ages.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateOct 9, 2012
    ISBN9780486310732
    The Spell of the Yukon and Other Poems
    Author

    Robert Service

    Robert Service is a Fellow of the British Academy and of St Antony's College, Oxford. He has written several books, including the highly acclaimed Lenin: A Biography, Russia: Experiment with a People , Stalin: A Biography and Comrades: A History of World Communism, as well as many other books on Russia's past and present. Trotsky: A Biography was awarded the 2009 Duff Cooper Prize. Married with four children, he lives in London.

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    • 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
      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.
    • 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.

    Book preview

    The Spell of the Yukon and Other Poems - Robert Service

    L’ENVOI

    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

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