Many years ago, when I was younger and hopefully engaged in the prospect of becoming rich selling real estate (a prospect that never panned out), I met and ultimately worked for a wonderful man named Fred Duncan who together with his wife Patsy, ran Sppon River Real Estate in Stony Point, NY. Fred was an amiable and agreeable man and a good manager, given to bursts of laughter and fits of generosity. He was well loved and well read. Among the things he gave me in the two years I worked with him, was an appreciation for little know poets and in particular, the verse of Robert Service.
Robert Service was an Englishman of Scottish and English descent. He moved to the Yukon at about 21 and began writing of the beauty of the place and poinancy of the lives and times of the men and women who mined, trapped, lived and died, and ultimately settled the region. His poetry is at once as bleakly beautiful and heartrending, and as homely and humble as the people and places themselves must have been.
So why this post? I was reading a post on the Spindlers list this morning with a link to knitting poetry and came across Winding Wool, the poem below, which I had all but forgotten:
Winding Wool
She'd bring to me a skein of wool
And beg me to hold out my hands;
so on my pipe I cease to pull
And watch her twine the shining strands
Into a ball so snug and neat,
Perchance a pair of socks to knit
To comfort my unworthy feet,
Or pullover my girth to fit.
As to the winding I would sway,
A poem in my head would sing,
And I would watch in dreamy way
The bright yarn swiftly slendering.
The best I liked were coloured strands
I let my pensive pipe grow cool . . .
Two active and two passive hands,
So busy winding shining wool.
Alas! Two of those hands are cold,
And in these days of wrath and wrong,
I am so wearyful and old,
I wonder if I've lived too long.
So in my loneliness I sit
And dream of sweet domestic rule . . .
When gentle women used to knit,
And men were happy winding wool.I have too many favorites to list here, but the first stanza of Lipstick Liz (Barroom Ballads) always makes me feel incredibly sad at the misunderstandings between men and women:
Lip-stick Liz
Oh Lip-Stick Liz was in the
biz, That's the oldest known in history;
She had a lot of fancy rags, Of her form she made no myst'ry.
She had a man, a fancy man, His name was Alexander,
And he used to beat her up because he couldn't understand her.
Now Lip-Stick Liz she loved
her man And she couldn't love no other
So when she saw him with a Broadway Blonde, Her rage she could not smother.
She saw him once and she saw him twice But the third time nearly crazed her,
So she walked bang into a hardware store, And she bought a brand new razor.
Now Lip-Stick Liz she
trailed them two For she was tired of weeping;
She trailed them two, in a flash hotel And there she found them sleeping;
So she gashed them once and she gashed them twice Their ju'lar veins to sever,
And the bright blood flowed like a brook between. And their lives were gone
forever.
Now Lip-Stick Liz went to
the p'lice And sez she: "Me hands are gory,
And you'll put me away in a deep dark cell When once you've heard me
story."
So they've put her away in a deep dark cell, Until her life be over
And what is the moral of the whole damn show, I wish I could discover.
Chorus:
Oh Lip-Stick Liz! What a lousy life this is.
It's a hell of a break for a girl on the make,
Oh Lip-Stick Liz!
I've been attempting to memorize the Cremation of Sam Mcgee for years. My wretched memory never lets me past the first two stanzas though:
The
Cremation of Sam McGee
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.
So if you like what you've read, you can find additional reading here, though I reccomend taking his collected works out of the library and enjoying them at your leisure. It's a journey through the Yukon you'll not soon forget - I promise.