Robert Service

I will not wash my face;
I will not brush my hair;
I “pig” around the place–
There’s nobody to care.
Nothing but rock and tree;
Nothing but wood and stone,
Oh, God, it’s hell to be
Alone, alone, alone!

Snow-peaks and deep-gashed draws
Corral me in a ring.
I feel as if I was
The only living thing
On all this blighted earth;
And so I frowst and shrink,
And crouching by my hearth
I hear the thoughts I think.

I think of all I miss–
The boys I used to know;
The girls I used to kiss;
The coin I used to blow:
The bars I used to haunt;
The racket and the row;
The beers I didn’t want
(I wish I had ‘em now).

Day after day the same,
Only a little worse;
No one to grouch or blame–
Oh, for a loving curse!
Oh, in the night I fear,
Haunted by nameless things,
Just for a voice to cheer,
Just for a hand that clings!

Faintly as from a star
Voices come o’er the line;
Voices of ghosts afar,
Not in this world of mine;
Lives in whose loom I grope;
Words in whose weft I hear
Eager the thrill of hope,
Awful the chill of fear.

I’m thinking out aloud;
I reckon that is bad;
(The snow is like a shroud)–
Maybe I’m going mad.
Say! wouldn’t that be tough?
This awful hush that hugs
And chokes one is enough
To make a man go “bugs”.

There’s not a thing to do;
I cannot sleep at night;
No wonder I’m so blue;
Oh, for a friendly fight!
The din and rush of strife;
A music-hall aglow;
A crowd, a city, life–
Dear God, I miss it so!

Here, you have moped enough!
Brace up and play the game!
But say, it’s awful tough–
Day after day the same
(I’ve said that twice, I bet).
Well, there’s not much to say.
I wish I had a pet,
Or something I could play.

Cheer up! don’t get so glum
And sick of everything;
The worst is yet to come;
God help you till the Spring.
God shield you from the Fear;
Teach you to laugh, not moan.
Ha! ha! it sounds so queer–
Alone, alone, alone!

“The aristocratic ne’er-do-well in Canada frequently finds his way
into the ranks of the Royal North-West Mounted Police.” –Extract.

Hark to the ewe that bore him:
“What has muddied the strain?
Never his brothers before him
Showed the hint of a stain.”
Hark to the tups and wethers;
Hark to the old gray ram:
“We’re all of us white, but he’s black as night,
And he’ll never be worth a damn.”

I’m up on the bally wood-pile at the back of the barracks yard;
“A damned disgrace to the force, sir”, with a comrade standing guard;
Making the bluff I’m busy, doing my six months hard.

“Six months hard and dismissed, sir.” Isn’t that rather hell?
And all because of the liquor laws and the wiles of a native belle–
Some “hooch” I gave to a siwash brave who swore that he wouldn’t tell.

At least they SAY that I did it. It’s so in the town report.
All that I can recall is a night of revel and sport,
When I woke with a “head” in the guard-room,
and they dragged me sick into court.

And the O. C. said: “You are guilty”, and I said never a word;
For, hang it, you see I couldn’t–I didn’t know WHAT had occurred,
And, under the circumstances, denial would be absurd.

But the one that cooked my bacon was Grubbe, of the City Patrol.
He fagged for my room at Eton, and didn’t I devil his soul!
And now he is getting even, landing me down in the hole.

Plugging away on the wood-pile; doing chores round the square.
There goes an officer’s lady–gives me a haughty stare–
Me that’s an earl’s own nephew–that is the hardest to bear.

To think of the poor old mater awaiting her prodigal son.
Tho’ I broke her heart with my folly, I was always the white-haired one.
(That fatted calf that they’re cooking will surely be overdone.)

I’ll go back and yarn to the Bishop; I’ll dance with the village belle;
I’ll hand round tea to the ladies, and everything will be well.
Where I have been won’t matter; what I have seen I won’t tell.

I’ll soar to their ken like a comet. They’ll see me with never a stain;
But will they reform me? –far from it. We pay for our pleasure with pain;
But the dog will return to his vomit, the hog to his wallow again.

I’ve chewed on the rind of creation, and bitter I’ve tasted the same;
Stacked up against hell and damnation, I’ve managed to stay in the game;
I’ve had my moments of sorrow; I’ve had my seasons of shame.

That’s past; when one’s nature’s a cracked one,
it’s too jolly hard to mend.
So long as the road is level, so long as I’ve cash to spend.
I’m bound to go to the devil, and it’s all the same in the end.

The bugle is sounding for stables; the men troop off through the gloom;
An orderly laying the tables sings in the bright mess-room.
(I’ll wash in the prison bucket, and brush with the prison broom.)

I’ll lie in my cell and listen; I’ll wish that I couldn’t hear
The laugh and the chaff of the fellows swigging the canteen beer;
The nasal tone of the gramophone playing “The Bandolier”.

And it seems to me, though it’s misty, that night of the flowing bowl,
That the man who potlatched the whiskey and landed me into the hole
WAS GRUBBE, THAT UNMERCIFUL BOUNDER, GRUBBE, OF THE CITY PATROL.

I strolled up old Bonanza, where I staked in ninety-eight,
A-purpose to revisit the old claim.
I kept thinking mighty sadly of the funny ways of Fate,
And the lads who once were with me in the game.
Poor boys, they’re down-and-outers, and there’s scarcely one to-day
Can show a dozen colors in his poke;
And me, I’m still prospecting, old and battered, gaunt and gray,
And I’m looking for a grub-stake, and I’m broke.

I strolled up old Bonanza. The same old moon looked down;
The same old landmarks seemed to yearn to me;
But the cabins all were silent, and the flat, once like a town,
Was mighty still and lonesome-like to see.
There were piles and piles of tailings where we toiled with pick and pan,
And turning round a bend I heard a roar,
And there a giant gold-ship of the very newest plan
Was tearing chunks of pay-dirt from the shore.

It wallowed in its water-bed; it burrowed, heaved and swung;
It gnawed its way ahead with grunts and sighs;
Its bill of fare was rock and sand; the tailings were its dung;
It glared around with fierce electric eyes.
Full fifty buckets crammed its maw; it bellowed out for more;
It looked like some great monster in the gloom.
With two to feed its sateless greed, it worked for seven score,
And I sighed: “Ah, old-time miner, here’s your doom!”

The idle windlass turns to rust; the sagging sluice-box falls;
The holes you digged are water to the brim;
Your little sod-roofed cabins with the snugly moss-chinked walls
Are deathly now and mouldering and dim.
The battle-field is silent where of old you fought it out;
The claims you fiercely won are lost and sold;
But there’s a little army that they’ll never put to rout–
The men who simply live to seek the gold.

The men who can’t remember when they learned to swing a pack,
Or in what lawless land the quest began;
The solitary seeker with his grub-stake on his back,
The restless buccaneer of pick and pan.
On the mesas of the Southland, on the tundras of the North,
You will find us, changed in face but still the same;
And it isn’t need, it isn’t greed that sends us faring forth–
It’s the fever, it’s the glory of the game.

For once you’ve panned the speckled sand and seen the bonny dust,
Its peerless brightness blinds you like a spell;
It’s little else you care about; you go because you must,
And you feel that you could follow it to hell.
You’d follow it in hunger, and you’d follow it in cold;
You’d follow it in solitude and pain;
And when you’re stiff and battened down let someone whisper “Gold”,
You’re lief to rise and follow it again.

Yet look you, if I find the stuff it’s just like so much dirt;
I fling it to the four winds like a child.
It’s wine and painted women and the things that do me hurt,
Till I crawl back, beggared, broken, to the Wild.
Till I crawl back, sapped and sodden, to my grub-stake and my tent–
There’s a city, there’s an army (hear them shout).
There’s the gold in millions, millions, but I haven’t got a cent;
And oh, it’s me, it’s me that found it out.

It was my dream that made it good, my dream that made me go
To lands of dread and death disprized of man;
But oh, I’ve known a glory that their hearts will never know,
When I picked the first big nugget from my pan.
It’s still my dream, my dauntless dream, that drives me forth once more
To seek and starve and suffer in the Vast;
That heaps my heart with eager hope, that glimmers on before–
My dream that will uplift me to the last.

Perhaps I am stark crazy, but there’s none of you too sane;
It’s just a little matter of degree.
My hobby is to hunt out gold; it’s fortressed in my brain;
It’s life and love and wife and home to me.
And I’ll strike it, yes, I’ll strike it; I’ve a hunch I cannot fail;
I’ve a vision, I’ve a prompting, I’ve a call;
I hear the hoarse stampeding of an army on my trail,
To the last, the greatest gold camp of them all.

Beyond the shark-tooth ranges sawing savage at the sky
There’s a lowering land no white man ever struck;
There’s gold, there’s gold in millions, and I’ll find it if I die,
And I’m going there once more to try my luck.
Maybe I’ll fail–what matter? It’s a mandate, it’s a vow;
And when in lands of dreariness and dread
You seek the last lone frontier, far beyond your frontiers now,
You will find the old prospector, silent, dead.

You will find a tattered tent-pole with a ragged robe below it;
You will find a rusted gold-pan on the sod;
You will find the claim I’m seeking,
with my bones as stakes to show it;
But I’ve sought the last Recorder, and He’s–God.

The man above was a murderer, the man below was a thief;
And I lay there in the bunk between, ailing beyond belief;
A weary armful of skin and bone, wasted with pain and grief.

My feet were froze, and the lifeless toes were purple and green and gray;
The little flesh that clung to my bones,
you could punch it in holes like clay;
The skin on my gums was a sullen black, and slowly peeling away.

I was sure enough in a direful fix, and often I wondered why
They did not take the chance that was left and leave me alone to die,
Or finish me off with a dose of dope–so utterly lost was I.

But no; they brewed me the green-spruce tea,
and nursed me there like a child;
And the homicide he was good to me, and bathed my sores and smiled;
And the thief he starved that I might be fed,
and his eyes were kind and mild.

Yet they were woefully wicked men, and often at night in pain
I heard the murderer speak of his deed and dream it over again;
I heard the poor thief sorrowing for the dead self he had slain.

I’ll never forget that bitter dawn, so evil, askew and gray,
When they wrapped me round in the skins of beasts
and they bore me to a sleigh,
And we started out with the nearest post an hundred miles away.

I’ll never forget the trail they broke, with its tense, unuttered woe;
And the crunch, crunch, crunch as their snowshoes sank
through the crust of the hollow snow;
And my breath would fail, and every beat of my heart was like a blow.

And oftentimes I would die the death, yet wake up to life anew;
The sun would be all ablaze on the waste, and the sky a blighting blue,
And the tears would rise in my snow-blind eyes
and furrow my cheeks like dew.

And the camps we made when their strength outplayed
and the day was pinched and wan;
And oh, the joy of that blessed halt, and how I did dread the dawn;
And how I hated the weary men who rose and dragged me on.

And oh, how I begged to rest, to rest–the snow was so sweet a shroud;
And oh, how I cried when they urged me on, cried and cursed them aloud;
Yet on they strained, all racked and pained,
and sorely their backs were bowed.

And then it was all like a lurid dream, and I prayed for a swift release
From the ruthless ones who would not leave me to die alone in peace;
Till I wakened up and I found myself at the post of the Mounted Police.

And there was my friend the murderer, and there was my friend the thief,
With bracelets of steel around their wrists, and wicked beyond belief:
But when they come to God’s judgment seat–may I be allowed the brief.

He’s the man from Eldorado, and he’s just arrived in town,
In moccasins and oily buckskin shirt.
He’s gaunt as any Indian, and pretty nigh as brown;
He’s greasy, and he smells of sweat and dirt.
He sports a crop of whiskers that would shame a healthy hog;
Hard work has racked his joints and stooped his back;
He slops along the sidewalk followed by his yellow dog,
But he’s got a bunch of gold-dust in his sack.

He seems a little wistful as he blinks at all the lights,
And maybe he is thinking of his claim
And the dark and dwarfish cabin where he lay and dreamed at nights,
(Thank God, he’ll never see the place again!)
Where he lived on tinned tomatoes, beef embalmed and sourdough bread,
On rusty beans and bacon furred with mould;
His stomach’s out of kilter and his system full of lead,
But it’s over, and his poke is full of gold.

He has panted at the windlass, he has loaded in the drift,
He has pounded at the face of oozy clay;
He has taxed himself to sickness, dark and damp and double shift,
He has labored like a demon night and day.
And now, praise God, it’s over, and he seems to breathe again
Of new-mown hay, the warm, wet, friendly loam;
He sees a snowy orchard in a green and dimpling plain,
And a little vine-clad cottage, and it’s–Home.

II.

He’s the man from Eldorado, and he’s had a bite and sup,
And he’s met in with a drouthy friend or two;
He’s cached away his gold-dust, but he’s sort of bucking up,
So he’s kept enough to-night to see him through.
His eye is bright and genial, his tongue no longer lags;
His heart is brimming o’er with joy and mirth;
He may be far from savory, he may be clad in rags,
But to-night he feels as if he owns the earth.

Says he: “Boys, here is where the shaggy North and I will shake;
I thought I’d never manage to get free.
I kept on making misses; but at last I’ve got my stake;
There’s no more thawing frozen muck for me.
I am going to God’s Country, where I’ll live the simple life;
I’ll buy a bit of land and make a start;
I’ll carve a little homestead, and I’ll win a little wife,
And raise ten little kids to cheer my heart.”

They signified their sympathy by crowding to the bar;
They bellied up three deep and drank his health.
He shed a radiant smile around and smoked a rank cigar;
They wished him honor, happiness and wealth.
They drank unto his wife to be–that unsuspecting maid;
They drank unto his children half a score;
And when they got through drinking very tenderly they laid
The man from Eldorado on the floor.

III.

He’s the man from Eldorado, and he’s only starting in
To cultivate a thousand-dollar jag.
His poke is full of gold-dust and his heart is full of sin,
And he’s dancing with a girl called Muckluck Mag.
She’s as light as any fairy; she’s as pretty as a peach;
She’s mistress of the witchcraft to beguile;
There’s sunshine in her manner, there is music in her speech,
And there’s concentrated honey in her smile.

Oh, the fever of the dance-hall and the glitter and the shine,
The beauty, and the jewels, and the whirl,
The madness of the music, the rapture of the wine,
The languorous allurement of a girl!
She is like a lost madonna; he is gaunt, unkempt and grim;
But she fondles him and gazes in his eyes;
Her kisses seek his heavy lips, and soon it seems to him
He has staked a little claim in Paradise.

“Who’s for a juicy two-step?” cries the master of the floor;
The music throbs with soft, seductive beat.
There’s glitter, gilt and gladness; there are pretty girls galore;
There’s a woolly man with moccasins on feet.
They know they’ve got him going; he is buying wine for all;
They crowd around as buzzards at a feast,
Then when his poke is empty they boost him from the hall,
And spurn him in the gutter like a beast.

He’s the man from Eldorado, and he’s painting red the town;
Behind he leaves a trail of yellow dust;
In a whirl of senseless riot he is ramping up and down;
There’s nothing checks his madness and his lust.
And soon the word is passed around–it travels like a flame;
They fight to clutch his hand and call him friend,
The chevaliers of lost repute, the dames of sorry fame;
Then comes the grim awakening–the end.

IV.

He’s the man from Eldorado, and he gives a grand affair;
There’s feasting, dancing, wine without restraint.
The smooth Beau Brummels of the bar, the faro men, are there;
The tinhorns and purveyors of red paint;
The sleek and painted women, their predacious eyes aglow–
Sure Klondike City never saw the like;
Then Muckluck Mag proposed the toast, “The giver of the show,
The livest sport that ever hit the pike.”

The “live one” rises to his feet; he stammers to reply–
And then there comes before his muddled brain
A vision of green vastitudes beneath an April sky,
And clover pastures drenched with silver rain.
He knows that it can never be, that he is down and out;
Life leers at him with foul and fetid breath;
And then amid the revelry, the song and cheer and shout,
He suddenly grows grim and cold as death.

He grips the table tensely, and he says: “Dear friends of mine,
I’ve let you dip your fingers in my purse;
I’ve crammed you at my table, and I’ve drowned you in my wine,
And I’ve little left to give you but–my curse.
I’ve failed supremely in my plans; it’s rather late to whine;
My poke is mighty weasened up and small.
I thank you each for coming here; the happiness is mine–
And now, you thieves and harlots, take it all.”

He twists the thong from off his poke; he swings it o’er his head;
The nuggets fall around their feet like grain.
They rattle over roof and wall; they scatter, roll and spread;
The dust is like a shower of golden rain.
The guests a moment stand aghast, then grovel on the floor;
They fight, and snarl, and claw, like beasts of prey;
And then, as everybody grabbed and everybody swore,
The man from Eldorado slipped away.

V.

He’s the man from Eldorado, and they found him stiff and dead,
Half covered by the freezing ooze and dirt.
A clotted Colt was in his hand, a hole was in his head,
And he wore an old and oily buckskin shirt.
His eyes were fixed and horrible, as one who hails the end;
The frost had set him rigid as a log;
And there, half lying on his breast, his last and only friend,
There crouched and whined a mangy yellow dog.

Now wouldn’t you expect to find a man an awful crank
That’s staked out nigh three hundred claims, and every one a blank;
That’s followed every fool stampede, and seen the rise and fall
Of camps where men got gold in chunks and he got none at all;
That’s prospected a bit of ground and sold it for a song
To see it yield a fortune to some fool that came along;
That’s sunk a dozen bed-rock holes, and not a speck in sight,
Yet sees them take a million from the claims to left and right?
Now aren’t things like that enough to drive a man to booze?
But Hard-Luck Smith was hoodoo-proof–he knew the way to lose.

‘Twas in the fall of nineteen four–leap-year I’ve heard them say–
When Hard-Luck came to Hunker Creek and took a hillside lay.
And lo! as if to make amends for all the futile past,
Late in the year he struck it rich, the real pay-streak at last.
The riffles of his sluicing-box were choked with speckled earth,
And night and day he worked that lay for all that he was worth.
And when in chill December’s gloom his lucky lease expired,
He found that he had made a stake as big as he desired.

One day while meditating on the waywardness of fate,
He felt the ache of lonely man to find a fitting mate;
A petticoated pard to cheer his solitary life,
A woman with soft, soothing ways, a confidant, a wife.
And while he cooked his supper on his little Yukon stove,
He wished that he had staked a claim in Love’s rich treasure-trove;
When suddenly he paused and held aloft a Yukon egg,
For there in pencilled letters was the magic name of Peg.

You know these Yukon eggs of ours–some pink, some green, some blue–
A dollar per, assorted tints, assorted flavors too.
The supercilious cheechako might designate them high,
But one acquires a taste for them and likes them by-and-by.
Well, Hard-Luck Henry took this egg and held it to the light,
And there was more faint pencilling that sorely taxed his sight.
At last he made it out, and then the legend ran like this–
“Will Klondike miner write to Peg, Plumhollow, Squashville, Wis.?”

That night he got to thinking of this far-off, unknown fair;
It seemed so sort of opportune, an answer to his prayer.
She flitted sweetly through his dreams, she haunted him by day,
She smiled through clouds of nicotine, she cheered his weary way.
At last he yielded to the spell; his course of love he set–
Wisconsin his objective point; his object, Margaret.

With every mile of sea and land his longing grew and grew.
He practised all his pretty words, and these, I fear, were few.
At last, one frosty evening, with a cold chill down his spine,
He found himself before her house, the threshold of the shrine.
His courage flickered to a spark, then glowed with sudden flame–
He knocked; he heard a welcome word; she came–his goddess came.
Oh, she was fair as any flower, and huskily he spoke:
“I’m all the way from Klondike, with a mighty heavy poke.
I’m looking for a lassie, one whose Christian name is Peg,
Who sought a Klondike miner, and who wrote it on an egg.”

The lassie gazed at him a space, her cheeks grew rosy red;
She gazed at him with tear-bright eyes, then tenderly she said:
“Yes, lonely Klondike miner, it is true my name is Peg.
It’s also true I longed for you and wrote it on an egg.
My heart went out to someone in that land of night and cold;
But oh, I fear that Yukon egg must have been mighty old.
I waited long, I hoped and feared; you should have come before;
I’ve been a wedded woman now for eighteen months or more.
I’m sorry, since you’ve come so far, you ain’t the one that wins;
But won’t you take a step inside–I’LL LET YOU SEE THE TWINS.”

‘Twas up in a land long famed for gold, where women were far and rare,
Tellus, the smith, had taken to wife a maiden amazingly fair;
Tellus, the brawny worker in iron, hairy and heavy of hand,
Saw her and loved her and bore her away from the tribe of a Southern land;
Deeming her worthy to queen his home and mother him little ones,
That the name of Tellus, the master smith, might live in his stalwart sons.

Now there was little of law in the land, and evil doings were rife,
And every man who joyed in his home guarded the fame of his wife;
For there were those of the silver tongue and the honeyed art to beguile,
Who would cozen the heart from a woman’s breast
and damn her soul with a smile.
And there were women too quick to heed a look or a whispered word,
And once in a while a man was slain, and the ire of the King was stirred;
So far and wide he proclaimed his wrath, and this was the law he willed:
“That whosoever killeth a man, even shall he be killed.”

Now Tellus, the smith, he trusted his wife; his heart was empty of fear.
High on the hill was the gleam of their hearth, a beacon of love and cheer.
High on the hill they builded their bower,
where the broom and the bracken meet;
Under a grave of oaks it was, hushed and drowsily sweet.
Here he enshrined her, his dearest saint, his idol, the light of his eye;
Her kisses rested upon his lips as brushes a butterfly.
The weight of her arms around his neck was light as the thistle down;
And sweetly she studied to win his smile, and gently she mocked his frown.
And when at the close of the dusty day his clangorous toil was done,
She hastened to meet him down the way all lit by the amber sun.

Their dove-cot gleamed in the golden light, a temple of stainless love;
Like the hanging cup of a big blue flower was the topaz sky above.
The roses and lilies yearned to her,
as swift through their throng she pressed;
A little white, fragile, fluttering thing
that lay like a child on his breast.
Then the heart of Tellus, the smith, was proud,
and sang for the joy of life,
And there in the bronzing summertide he thanked the gods for his wife.

Now there was one called Philo, a scribe, a man of exquisite grace,
Carved like the god Apollo in limb, fair as Adonis in face;
Eager and winning in manner, full of such radiant charm,
Womenkind fought for his favor and loved to their uttermost harm.
Such was his craft and his knowledge, such was his skill at the game,
Never was woman could flout him, so be he plotted her shame.
And so he drank deep of pleasure, and then it fell on a day
He gazed on the wife of Tellus and marked her out for his prey.

Tellus, the smith, was merry, and the time of the year it was June,
So he said to his stalwart helpers: “Shut down the forge at noon.
Go ye and joy in the sunshine, rest in the coolth of the grove,
Drift on the dreamy river, every man with his love.”
Then to himself: “Oh, Beloved, sweet will be your surprise;
To-day will we sport like children, laugh in each other’s eyes;
Weave gay garlands of poppies, crown each other with flowers,
Pull plump carp from the lilies, rifle the ferny bowers.
To-day with feasting and gladness the wine of Cyprus will flow;
To-day is the day we were wedded only a twelvemonth ago.”

The larks trilled high in the heavens; his heart was lyric with joy;
He plucked a posy of lilies; he sped like a love-sick boy.
He stole up the velvety pathway–his cottage was sunsteeped and still;
Vines honeysuckled the window; softly he peeped o’er the sill.
The lilies dropped from his fingers; devils were choking his breath;
Rigid with horror, he stiffened; ghastly his face was as death.
Like a nun whose faith in the Virgin is met with a prurient jibe,
He shrank–’twas the wife of his bosom in the arms of Philo, the scribe.

Tellus went back to his smithy; he reeled like a drunken man;
His heart was riven with anguish; his brain was brooding a plan.
Straight to his anvil he hurried; started his furnace aglow;
Heated his iron and shaped it with savage and masterful blow.
Sparks showered over and round him; swiftly under his hand
There at last it was finished–a hideous and infamous Brand.

That night the wife of his bosom, the light of joy in her eyes,
Kissed him with words of rapture; but he knew that her words were lies.
Never was she so beguiling, never so merry of speech
(For passion ripens a woman as the sunshine ripens a peach).
He clenched his teeth into silence; he yielded up to her lure,
Though he knew that her breasts were heaving from the fire of her paramour.
“To-morrow,” he said, “to-morrow”–he wove her hair in a strand,
Twisted it round his fingers and smiled as he thought of the Brand.

The morrow was come, and Tellus swiftly stole up the hill.
Butterflies drowsed in the noon-heat; coverts were sunsteeped and still.
Softly he padded the pathway unto the porch, and within
Heard he the low laugh of dalliance, heard he the rapture of sin.
Knew he her eyes were mystic with light that no man should see,
No man kindle and joy in, no man on earth save he.
And never for him would it kindle. The bloodlust surged in his brain;
Through the senseless stone could he see them, wanton and warily fain.
Horrible! Heaven he sought for, gained it and gloried and fell–
Oh, it was sudden–headlong into the nethermost hell. . . .

Was this he, Tellus, this marble? Tellus . . . not dreaming a dream?
Ah! sharp-edged as a javelin, was that a woman’s scream?
Was it a door that shattered, shell-like, under his blow?
Was it his saint, that strumpet, dishevelled and cowering low?
Was it her lover, that wild thing, that twisted and gouged and tore?
Was it a man he was crushing, whose head he beat on the floor?
Laughing the while at its weakness, till sudden he stayed his hand–
Through the red ring of his madness flamed the thought of the Brand.

Then bound he the naked Philo with thongs that cut in the flesh,
And the wife of his bosom, fear-frantic, he gagged with a silken mesh,
Choking her screams into silence; bound her down by the hair;
Dragged her lover unto her under her frenzied stare.
In the heat of the hearth-fire embers he heated the hideous Brand;
Twisting her fingers open, he forced its haft in her hand.
He pressed it downward and downward; she felt the living flesh sear;
She saw the throe of her lover; she heard the scream of his fear.
Once, twice and thrice he forced her, heedless of prayer and shriek–
Once on the forehead of Philo, twice in the soft of his cheek.
Then (for the thing was finished) he said to the woman: “See
How you have branded your lover! Now will I let him go free.”
He severed the thongs that bound him, laughing: “Revenge is sweet”,
And Philo, sobbing in anguish, feebly rose to his feet.
The man who was fair as Apollo, god-like in woman’s sight,
Hideous now as a satyr, fled to the pity of night.

Then came they before the Judgment Seat,
and thus spoke the Lord of the Land:
“He who seeketh his neighbor’s wife
shall suffer the doom of the Brand.
Brutish and bold on his brow be it stamped,
deep in his cheek let it sear,
That every man may look on his shame, and shudder and sicken and fear.
He shall hear their mock in the market-place,
their fleering jibe at the feast;
He shall seek the caves and the shroud of night,
and the fellowship of the beast.
Outcast forever from homes of men, far and far shall he roam.
Such be the doom, sadder than death, of him who shameth a home.”

This is the tale that was told to me by the man with the crystal eye,
As I smoked my pipe in the camp-fire light,
and the Glories swept the sky;
As the Northlights gleamed and curved and streamed,
and the bottle of “hooch” was dry.

A man once aimed that my life be shamed, and wrought me a deathly wrong;
I vowed one day I would well repay, but the heft of his hate was strong.
He thonged me East and he thonged me West; he harried me back and forth,
Till I fled in fright from his peerless spite
to the bleak, bald-headed North.

And there I lay, and for many a day I hatched plan after plan,
For a golden haul of the wherewithal to crush and to kill my man;
And there I strove, and there I clove through the drift of icy streams;
And there I fought, and there I sought for the pay-streak of my dreams.

So twenty years, with their hopes and fears and smiles and tears and such,
Went by and left me long bereft of hope of the Midas touch;
About as fat as a chancel rat, and lo! despite my will,
In the weary fight I had clean lost sight of the man I sought to kill.

‘Twas so far away, that evil day when I prayed to the Prince of Gloom
For the savage strength and the sullen length of life to work his doom.
Nor sign nor word had I seen or heard, and it happed so long ago;
My youth was gone and my memory wan, and I willed it even so.

It fell one night in the waning light by the Yukon’s oily flow,
I smoked and sat as I marvelled at the sky’s port-winey glow;
Till it paled away to an absinthe gray, and the river seemed to shrink,
All wobbly flakes and wriggling snakes and goblin eyes a-wink.

‘Twas weird to see and it ‘wildered me in a queer, hypnotic dream,
Till I saw a spot like an inky blot come floating down the stream;
It bobbed and swung; it sheered and hung; it romped round in a ring;
It seemed to play in a tricksome way; it sure was a merry thing.

In freakish flights strange oily lights came fluttering round its head,
Like butterflies of a monster size–then I knew it for the Dead.
Its face was rubbed and slicked and scrubbed as smooth as a shaven pate;
In the silver snakes that the water makes it gleamed like a dinner-plate.

It gurgled near, and clear and clear and large and large it grew;
It stood upright in a ring of light and it looked me through and through.
It weltered round with a woozy sound, and ere I could retreat,
With the witless roll of a sodden soul it wantoned to my feet.

And here I swear by this Cross I wear, I heard that “floater” say:
“I am the man from whom you ran, the man you sought to slay.
That you may note and gaze and gloat, and say `Revenge is sweet’,
In the grit and grime of the river’s slime I am rotting at your feet.

“The ill we rue we must e’en undo, though it rive us bone from bone;
So it came about that I sought you out, for I prayed I might atone.
I did you wrong, and for long and long I sought where you might live;
And now you’re found, though I’m dead and drowned, I beg you to forgive.”

So sad it seemed, and its cheek-bones gleamed,
and its fingers flicked the shore;
And it lapped and lay in a weary way, and its hands met to implore;
That I gently said: “Poor, restless dead, I would never work you woe;
Though the wrong you rue you can ne’er undo, I forgave you long ago.”

Then, wonder-wise, I rubbed my eyes and I woke from a horrid dream.
The moon rode high in the naked sky, and something bobbed in the stream.
It held my sight in a patch of light, and then it sheered from the shore;
It dipped and sank by a hollow bank, and I never saw it more.

This was the tale he told to me, that man so warped and gray,
Ere he slept and dreamed, and the camp-fire gleamed
in his eye in a wolfish way–
That crystal eye that raked the sky in the weird Auroral ray.

I took a contract to bury the body of blasphemous Bill MacKie,
Whenever, wherever or whatsoever the manner of death he die–
Whether he die in the light o’ day or under the peak-faced moon;
In cabin or dance-hall, camp or dive, mucklucks or patent shoon;
On velvet tundra or virgin peak, by glacier, drift or draw;
In muskeg hollow or canyon gloom, by avalanche, fang or claw;
By battle, murder or sudden wealth, by pestilence, hooch or lead–
I swore on the Book I would follow and look till I found my tombless dead.

For Bill was a dainty kind of cuss, and his mind was mighty sot
On a dinky patch with flowers and grass in a civilized bone-yard lot.
And where he died or how he died, it didn’t matter a damn
So long as he had a grave with frills and a tombstone “epigram”.
So I promised him, and he paid the price in good cheechako coin
(Which the same I blowed in that very night down in the Tenderloin).
Then I painted a three-foot slab of pine: “Here lies poor Bill MacKie”,
And I hung it up on my cabin wall and I waited for Bill to die.

Years passed away, and at last one day came a squaw with a story strange,
Of a long-deserted line of traps ‘way back of the Bighorn range;
Of a little hut by the great divide, and a white man stiff and still,
Lying there by his lonesome self, and I figured it must be Bill.
So I thought of the contract I’d made with him,
and I took down from the shelf
The swell black box with the silver plate he’d picked out for hisself;
And I packed it full of grub and “hooch”, and I slung it on the sleigh;
Then I harnessed up my team of dogs and was off at dawn of day.

You know what it’s like in the Yukon wild when it’s sixty-nine below;
When the ice-worms wriggle their purple heads
through the crust of the pale blue snow;
When the pine-trees crack like little guns in the silence of the wood,
And the icicles hang down like tusks under the parka hood;
When the stove-pipe smoke breaks sudden off, and the sky is weirdly lit,
And the careless feel of a bit of steel burns like a red-hot spit;
When the mercury is a frozen ball, and the frost-fiend stalks to kill–
Well, it was just like that that day when I set out to look for Bill.

Oh, the awful hush that seemed to crush me down on every hand,
As I blundered blind with a trail to find
through that blank and bitter land;
Half dazed, half crazed in the winter wild,
with its grim heart-breaking woes,
And the ruthless strife for a grip on life that only the sourdough knows!
North by the compass, North I pressed; river and peak and plain
Passed like a dream I slept to lose and I waked to dream again.

River and plain and mighty peak–and who could stand unawed?
As their summits blazed, he could stand undazed
at the foot of the throne of God.
North, aye, North, through a land accurst, shunned by the scouring brutes,
And all I heard was my own harsh word and the whine of the malamutes,
Till at last I came to a cabin squat, built in the side of a hill,
And I burst in the door, and there on the floor, frozen to death, lay Bill.

Ice, white ice, like a winding-sheet, sheathing each smoke-grimed wall;
Ice on the stove-pipe, ice on the bed, ice gleaming over all;
Sparkling ice on the dead man’s chest, glittering ice in his hair,
Ice on his fingers, ice in his heart, ice in his glassy stare;
Hard as a log and trussed like a frog, with his arms and legs outspread.
I gazed at the coffin I’d brought for him,
and I gazed at the gruesome dead,
And at last I spoke: “Bill liked his joke; but still, goldarn his eyes,
A man had ought to consider his mates in the way he goes and dies.”

Have you ever stood in an Arctic hut in the shadow of the Pole,
With a little coffin six by three and a grief you can’t control?
Have you ever sat by a frozen corpse that looks at you with a grin,
And that seems to say: “You may try all day, but you’ll never jam me in”?
I’m not a man of the quitting kind, but I never felt so blue
As I sat there gazing at that stiff and studying what I’d do.
Then I rose and I kicked off the husky dogs that were nosing round about,
And I lit a roaring fire in the stove, and I started to thaw Bill out.

Well, I thawed and thawed for thirteen days, but it didn’t seem no good;
His arms and legs stuck out like pegs, as if they was made of wood.
Till at last I said: “It ain’t no use–he’s froze too hard to thaw;
He’s obstinate, and he won’t lie straight, so I guess I got to–SAW.”
So I sawed off poor Bill’s arms and legs, and I laid him snug and straight
In the little coffin he picked hisself, with the dinky silver plate;
And I came nigh near to shedding a tear as I nailed him safely down;
Then I stowed him away in my Yukon sleigh, and I started back to town.

So I buried him as the contract was in a narrow grave and deep,
And there he’s waiting the Great Clean-up,
when the Judgment sluice-heads sweep;
And I smoke my pipe and I meditate in the light of the Midnight Sun,
And sometimes I wonder if they WAS, the awful things I done.
And as I sit and the parson talks, expounding of the Law,
I often think of poor old Bill–AND HOW HARD HE WAS TO SAW.

“The North has got him.” –Yukonism.

I tried to refine that neighbor of mine, honest to God, I did.
I grieved for his fate, and early and late I watched over him like a kid.
I gave him excuse, I bore his abuse in every way that I could;
I swore to prevail; I camped on his trail;
I plotted and planned for his good.
By day and by night I strove in men’s sight to gather him into the fold,
With precept and prayer, with hope and despair,
in hunger and hardship and cold.
I followed him into Gehennas of sin, I sat where the sirens sit;
In the shade of the Pole, for the sake of his soul,
I strove with the powers of the Pit.
I shadowed him down to the scrofulous town;
I dragged him from dissolute brawls;
But I killed the galoot when he started to shoot electricity into my walls.

God knows what I did he should seek to be rid
of one who would save him from shame.
God knows what I bore that night when he swore
and bade me make tracks from his claim.
I started to tell of the horrors of hell,
when sudden his eyes lit like coals;
And “Chuck it,” says he, “don’t persecute me
with your cant and your saving of souls.”
I’ll swear I was mild as I’d be with a child,
but he called me the son of a slut;
And, grabbing his gun with a leap and a run,
he threatened my face with the butt.
So what could I do (I leave it to you)? With curses he harried me forth;
Then he was alone, and I was alone, and over us menaced the North.

Our cabins were near; I could see, I could hear;
but between us there rippled the creek;
And all summer through, with a rancor that grew,
he would pass me and never would speak.
Then a shuddery breath like the coming of Death
crept down from the peaks far away;
The water was still; the twilight was chill; the sky was a tatter of gray.
Swift came the Big Cold, and opal and gold the lights of the witches arose;
The frost-tyrant clinched, and the valley was cinched
by the stark and cadaverous snows.
The trees were like lace where the star-beams could chase,
each leaf was a jewel agleam.
The soft white hush lapped the Northland and wrapped
us round in a crystalline dream;
So still I could hear quite loud in my ear
the swish of the pinions of time;
So bright I could see, as plain as could be,
the wings of God’s angels ashine.

As I read in the Book I would oftentimes look
to that cabin just over the creek.
Ah me, it was sad and evil and bad, two neighbors who never would speak!
I knew that full well like a devil in hell
he was hatching out, early and late,
A system to bear through the frost-spangled air
the warm, crimson waves of his hate.
I only could peer and shudder and fear–’twas ever so ghastly and still;
But I knew over there in his lonely despair
he was plotting me terrible ill.
I knew that he nursed a malice accurst,
like the blast of a winnowing flame;
I pleaded aloud for a shield, for a shroud–Oh, God! then calamity came.

Mad! If I’m mad then you too are mad; but it’s all in the point of view.
If you’d looked at them things gallivantin’ on wings,
all purple and green and blue;
If you’d noticed them twist, as they mounted and hissed
like scorpions dim in the dark;
If you’d seen them rebound with a horrible sound,
and spitefully spitting a spark;
If you’d watched IT with dread, as it hissed by your bed,
that thing with the feelers that crawls–
You’d have settled the brute that attempted to shoot
electricity into your walls.

Oh, some they were blue, and they slithered right through;
they were silent and squashy and round;
And some they were green; they were wriggly and lean;
they writhed with so hateful a sound.
My blood seemed to freeze; I fell on my knees;
my face was a white splash of dread.
Oh, the Green and the Blue, they were gruesome to view;
but the worst of them all were the Red.
They came through the door, they came through the floor,
they came through the moss-creviced logs.
They were savage and dire; they were whiskered with fire;
they bickered like malamute dogs.
They ravined in rings like iniquitous things;
they gulped down the Green and the Blue.
I crinkled with fear whene’er they drew near,
and nearer and nearer they drew.

And then came the crown of Horror’s grim crown,
the monster so loathsomely red.
Each eye was a pin that shot out and in, as, squidlike, it oozed to my bed;
So softly it crept with feelers that swept
and quivered like fine copper wire;
Its belly was white with a sulphurous light,
it jaws were a-drooling with fire.
It came and it came; I could breathe of its flame,
but never a wink could I look.
I thrust in its maw the Fount of the Law; I fended it off with the Book.
I was weak–oh, so weak–but I thrilled at its shriek,
as wildly it fled in the night;
And deathlike I lay till the dawn of the day.
(Was ever so welcome the light?)

I loaded my gun at the rise of the sun; to his cabin so softly I slunk.
My neighbor was there in the frost-freighted air,
all wrapped in a robe in his bunk.
It muffled his moans; it outlined his bones, as feebly he twisted about;
His gums were so black, and his lips seemed to crack,
and his teeth all were loosening out.
‘Twas a death’s head that peered through the tangle of beard;
’twas a face I will never forget;
Sunk eyes full of woe, and they troubled me so
with their pleadings and anguish, and yet
As I rested my gaze in a misty amaze on the scurvy-degenerate wreck,
I thought of the Things with the dragon-fly wings,
then laid I my gun on his neck.
He gave out a cry that was faint as a sigh, like a perishing malamute,
And he says unto me, “I’m converted,” says he;
“for Christ’s sake, Peter, don’t shoot!”

* * * * *

They’re taking me out with an escort about, and under a sergeant’s care;
I am humbled indeed, for I’m ‘cuffed to a Swede
that thinks he’s a millionaire.
But it’s all Gospel true what I’m telling to you–
up there where the Shadow falls–
That I settled Sam Noot when he started to shoot electricity into my walls.