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 whiskey 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 licker.
He wanted to mush along in the slush,
With a team of huskie 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 a Malamute saloon
And Dan Megrew 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 hardboiled crowd,
That he’d cree-mate 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 Megrew,
And becoming bolder, throw over his shoulder
The lady that’s known as Lou.
Oh, tough as a steak was Yukon Jake—
Hardboiled 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 squared
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 that’s 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 Megrew
For a huskie dog and some hot egg-nog—
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!
SAMUEL MINTURN PECK
(1854–1938)
PECK IS ANOTHER example of a once-admired writer of verse, songs, essays, novels and short stories who was never taken seriously by critics. Born in Tuscaloosa, where he spent his entire life, Peck served in the Alabama state legislature and was designated the state’s first poet laureate.
Books of Peck’s verse include Caps and Bells (1886), Rings and Love Knots (1892), Rhymes and Roses (1895), Maybloom and Myrtle (1910) and The Autumn Trail (1925). I have no idea in what book his most popular poem, “A Kiss in the Rain,” can be found, or where it was first published.
A Kiss in the Rain
One stormy night I chanced to meet
A lassie in the town;
Her locks were like the ripened wheat,
Her laughing eyes were brown.
I watched her as she tripped along,
Till madness filled my brain,
And then—and then I know ’twas wrong—
I kissed her in the rain.
With rain-drops shining on her cheek,
Like dewdrops on a rose,
The little lassie strove to speak,
My boldness to oppose;
She strove in vain, and, quivering,
Her fingers stole in mine;
And then the birds began to sing
The sun began to shine.
Oh, let the clouds grow dark above,
My heart is light below;
’Tis always summer when we love,
However winds may blow;
And I am proud as any prince,
All honors I disdain;
She says I am her rain-beau, since
I kissed her in the rain.
NORA PERRY
(1841–1896)
BORN IN DUDLEY, Massachusetts, and brought up in Providence, Rhode Island, Perry moved to Boston where she was a correspondent for several out-of-town newspapers before she began to earn a living by writing stories for girls. Her verse is collected in several volumes. A sentimental sixteen-stanza poem about Marge and Madge, titled “After the Ball,” was her most popular poem, but “The Love-Knot” made its way into more ant
hologies.
The Love-Knot
Tying her bonnet under her chin,
She tied her raven ringlets in;
But not alone in the silken snare
Did she catch her lovely floating hair,
For, tying her bonnet under her chin,
She tied a young man’s heart within.
They were strolling together up the hill,
Where the wind came blowing merry and chill;
And it blew the curls, a frolicsome race,
All over the happy peach-colored face.
Till, scolding and laughing, she tied them in,
Under her beautiful, dimpled chin.
And it blew a color, bright as the bloom
Of the pinkest fuchsia’s tossing plume,
All over the cheeks of the prettiest girl
That ever imprisoned a romping curl,
Or, in tying her bonnet under her chin,
Tied a young man’s heart within.
Steeper and steeper grew the hill,
Madder, merrier, chillier still
The western wind blew down, and played
The wildest tricks with the little maid,
As, tying her bonnet under her chin,
She tied a young man’s heart within.
O western wind, do you think it was fair
To play such tricks with her floating hair?
To gladly, gleefully, do your best
To blow her against the young man’s breast,
Where he as gladly folded her in,
And kissed her mouth and her dimpled chin?
Ah! Ellery Vane, you little thought,
An hour ago, when you besought
This country lass to walk with you,
After the sun had dried the dew,
What terrible danger you’d be in,
As she tied her bonnet under her chin!
EDGAR ALLAN POE
(1809–1849)
IN BEST REMEMBERED POEMS I included Poe’s “Annabel Lee,” “The Raven,” “To Helen” and “The Bells.” Less well known today is A Dream within a Dream, which I regard as Poe’s finest, most moving lyric.
Here is the poem’s history as given in a footnote in Edgar Allan Poe, a book begun by Margaret Allerton and completed by Hardin Craig (1935):
This poem is protean in form. It was first published as “Imitation” in the 1827 volume; in a widely differing version entitled “To———” in the 1829 volume; appended to “Tamerlane” in the 1831 collection; and in the greatly altered form given in this text in the Flag of Our Union, March 31, 1849. At the time of his death, Poe was preparing to publish the poem again with still further slight revisions in the Examiner of Richmond (Whitty, Complete Poems, viii–ix). The interesting feature of the history of the poem is the fact that Poe continued to meditate on the theme of the transitoriness of his life. In the earliest version life has been like a dream, and he is willing to let it pass. Into the 1829 form comes the figure of the sands sifting through his fingers; life seems paltry, but he will endure it. Into the latest versions comes the conclusion that life is like a dream within a dream. The poem grows less and less autobiographical.
The three volumes referred to are Poe’s Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), AL Aaraaj, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829) and Poems (1831).
A Dream within a Dream
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow:
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if Hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand—
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep—while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
(1849–1916)
NOTES ON RILEY’S life are given in Best Remembered Poems as an introduction to four of his most popular poems. Here we reprint another of his famous poems. It first ran in the Indianapolis Journal (June 14, 1884), and made its first book appearance in Afterwhiles (1888).
“Out to Old Aunt Mary’s” was set to music in 1897 by R. Atkinson, and later by others. It was one of Riley’s most effective stage recitations. On one occasion, when the actress Ellen Terry was in the audience, she was visibly overcome with emotion.
Out to Old Aunt Mary’s
Wasn’t it pleasant, O brother mine,
In those old days of the lost sunshine
Of youth—when the Saturday’s chores were through,
And the “Sunday’s wood” in the kitchen, too,
And we went visiting, “me and you,”
Out to Old Aunt Mary’s?—
“Me and you”—And the morning fair,
With the dewdrops twinkling everywhere;
The scent of the cherry-blossoms blown
After us, in the roadway lone,
Our capering shadows onward thrown—
Out to Old Aunt Mary’s!
It all comes back so clear to-day!
Though I am as bald as you are gray,—
Out by the barn-lot and down the lane
We patter along in the dust again,
As light as the tips of the drops of the rain,
Out to Old Aunt Mary’s.
The few last houses of the town;
Then on, up the high creek-bluffs and down;
Past the squat toll-gate, with its well-sweep pole,
The bridge, and “the old ’babtizin’-hole,’ ”
Loitering, awed, o’er pool and shoal,
Out to Old Aunt Mary’s.
We cross the pasture, and through the wood,
Where the old gray snag of the poplar stood,
Where the hammering “red-heads” hopped awry,
And the buzzard “raised” in the “clearing”-sky
And lolled and circled, as we went by
Out to Old Aunt Mary’s.
Or, stayed by the glint of the redbird’s wings,
Or the glitter of song that the bluebird sings,
All hushed we feign to strike strange trails,
As the “big braves” do in the Indian tales,
Till again our real quest lags and fails—
Out to Old Aunt Mary’s.—
And the woodland echoes with yells of mirth
That make old war-whoops of minor worth! . . .
Where such heroes of war as we?—
With bows and arrows of fantasy,
Chasing each other from tree to tree
Out to Old Aunt Mary’s!
And then in the dust of the road again;
And the teams we met, and the countrymen;
And the long highway, with sunshine spread
As thick as butter on country bread,
Our cares behind, and our hearts ahead
Out to Old Aunt Mary’s.—
For only, now, at the road’s next bend
To the right we could make out the gable-end
Of the fine old Huston homestead—not
Half a mile from the sacred spot
Where dwelt our Saint in her simple cot—
Out to Old Aunt Mary’s.
Why, I see her now in the open door
Where the little gourds grew up the sides and o’er
The clapboard roof!—And her face—ah, me!
Wasn’t it good for a boy to see—
And wasn’
t it good for a boy to be
Out to Old Aunt Mary’s?—
The jelly—the jam and the marmalade,
And the cherry and quince “preserves” she made!
And the sweet-sour pickles of peach and pear,
With cinnamon in ’em, and all things rare!—
And the more we ate was the more to spare,
Out to Old Aunt Mary’s!
Ah! was there, ever, so kind a face
And gentle as hers, or such a grace
Of welcoming, as she cut the cake
Or the juicy pies that she joyed to make
Just for the visiting children’s sake—
Out to Old Aunt Mary’s!
The honey, too, in its amber comb
One only finds in an old farm-home;
And the coffee, fragrant and sweet, and ho!
So hot that we gloried to drink it so,
With spangles of tears in our eyes, you know—
Out to Old Aunt Mary’s.
And the romps we took, in our glad unrest!—
Was it the lawn that we loved the best,
With its swooping swing in the locust trees,
Or was it the grove, with its leafy breeze,
Or the dim haymow, with its fragrancies—
Out to Old Aunt Mary’s.
Far fields, bottom-lands, creek-banks—all,
We ranged at will.—Where the waterfall
Laughed all day as it slowly poured
Over the dam by the old mill-ford,
While the tail-race writhed, and the mill-wheel roared—
Out to Old Aunt Mary’s.
But home, with Aunty in nearer call,
Famous Poems from Bygone Days Page 15