The Giant Book of Poetry

by William H. Roetzheim, Editor

  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 ‘taint 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.

  The Shooting of Dan McGrew1

  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 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 helf-dead thing in a stark, dead world,

  clean mad for the muck called gold;
<
br />   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 cozy joy,

  and crowded 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 misery,”

  said Dangerous Dan McGrew.

  The music almost dies 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 known as Lou.

  The Smoking Frog1

  Three men I saw beside a bar,

  regarding o’er their bottle,

  a frog who smoked a rank cigar

  they’d jammed within its throttle.

  A Pasha frog it must have been

  so big it was and bloated;

  and from its lips the nicotine

  in graceful festoon floated.

  And while the trio jeered and joked,

  as if it quite enjoyed it,

  impassively it smoked and smoked,

  (it could not well avoid it).

  A ring of fire its lips were nigh

  yet it seemed all unwitting;

  it could not spit, like you and I,

  who’ve learned the art of spitting.

  It did not wink, it did not shrink,

  as there serene it squatted’

  its eyes were clear, it did not fear

  the fate the Gods allotted.

  It squatted there with calm sublime,

  amid their cruel guying;

  grave as a god, and all the time

  it knew that it was dying.

  And somehow then it seemed to me

  these men expectorating,

  were infinitely less than he,

  the dumb thing they were baiting.

  It seemed to say, despite their jokes:

  “this is my hour of glory.

  It isn’t every frog that smokes:

  my name will live in story.”

  Before its nose the smoke arose;

  the flame grew nigher, nigher;

  and then I saw its bright eyes close

  beside that ring of fire.

  They turned it on its warty back,

  from off its bloated belly;

  its legs jerked out, then dangled slack;

  it quivered like a jelly.

  And then the fellows went away,

  contented with their joking;

  but even as in death it lay,

  the frog continued smoking.

  Life’s like a lighted fag, thought I;

  we smoke it stale; then after

  death turns our belly to the sky:

  the Gods must have their laughter.

  The Soldier of Fortune1

  “Deny your God!” they ringed me with their spears;

  blood-crazed were they, and reeking from the strife;

  hell-hot their hate, and venom-fanged their sneers,

  and one man spat on me and nursed a knife.

  And there was I, sore wounded and alone,

  I, the last living of my slaughtered band.

  Oh sinister the sky, and cold as stone!

  In one red laugh of horror reeled the land.

  And dazed and desperate I faced their spears,

  and like a flame out-leaped that naked knife,

  and like a serpent stung their bitter jeers:

  “Deny your God, and we will give you life.”

  Deny my God! Oh life was very sweet!

  And it is hard in youth and hope to die;

  and there my comrades dear lay at my feet,

  and in that blear of blood soon must I lie.

  And yet … I almost laughed—it seemed so odd,

  for long and long had I not vainly tried

  to reason out and body forth my God,

  and prayed for light, and doubted—and denied:

  denied the Being I could not conceive,

  denied a life-to-be beyond the grave … .

  and now they ask me, who do not believe,

  just to deny, to voice my doubt, to save

  this life of mine that sings so in the sun,

  the bloom of youth yet red upon my cheek,

  my only life!—O fools! ’tis easy done,

  I will deny … and yet I do not speak.

  “Deny your God!” their spears are all agleam,

  and I can see their eyes with blood-lust shine;

  their snarling voices shrill into a scream,

  and, mad to slay, they quiver for the sign.

  Deny my God! yes, I could do it well;

  yet if I did, what of my race, my name?

  How they would spit on me, these dogs of hell!

  Spurn me, and put on me the brand of shame.

  A white man’s honor! what of that, I say?

  Shall these black curs cry “Coward” in my face?

  They who would perish for their gods of clay—

  shall I defile my country and my race?

  My country! what’s my country to me now?

  Soldier of Fortune, free and far I roam;

  all men are brothers in my heart, I vow;

  the wide and wondrous world is all my home.

  My country! reverent of
her splendid Dead,

  her heroes proud, her martyrs pierced with pain:

  for me her puissant blood was vainly shed;

  for me her drums of battle beat in vain,

  and free I fare, half-heedless of her fate:

  no faith, no flag I owe—then why not seek

  this last loop-hole of life? Why hesitate?

  I will deny … and yet I do not speak.

  “Deny your God!” their spears are poised on high,

  and tense and terrible they wait the word;

  and dark and darker glooms the dreary sky,

  and in that hush of horror no thing stirred.

  Then, through the ringing terror and sheer hate

  leaped there a vision to me—Oh, how far!

  A face, Her face … through all my stormy fate

  a joy, a strength, a glory and a star.

  Beneath the pines, where lonely camp-fires gleam,

  in seas forlorn, amid the deserts drear,

  how I had gladdened to that face of dream!

  And never, never had it seemed so dear.

  O silken hair that veils the sunny brow!

  O eyes of grey, so tender and so true!

  O lips of smiling sweetness! must I now

  for ever and for ever go from you?

  Ah, yes, I must … for if I do this thing,

  how can I look into your face again?

  Knowing you think me more than half a king,

  I with my craven heart, my honor slain.

  No! no! my mind’s made up. I gaze above,

  into that sky insensate as a stone;

  not for my creed, my country, but my Love

  will I stand up and meet my death alone.

  Then though it be to utter dark I sink,

  the God that dwells in me is not denied;

  “Best” triumphs over “Beast,”—and so I think

  humanity itself is glorified … .

  “And now, my butchers, I embrace my fate.

  Come! let my heart’s blood slake the thirsty sod.

  Curst be the life you offer! Glut your hate!

  Strike! Strike, you dogs! I’ll not deny my God.”

  I saw the spears that seemed a-leap to slay,

  all quiver earthward at the headman’s nod;

  and in a daze of dream I heard him say:

  “Go, set him free who serves so well his God!”

  The Wee Shop1

  She risked her all, they told me, bravely sinking

  the pinched economies of thirty years;

  and there the little shop was, meek and shrinking,

  the sum of all her dreams and hopes and fears.