human
Can you continue this poem for me?
  My rhymes are rough, and often in my rhyming
Men of the High North, the wild sky is blazing;
One of the Down and Out--that's me.  Stare at me well, ay, stare!
I tried to refine that neighbor of mine, honest to God, I did.
I took a contract to bury the body of blasphemous Bill MacKie,
Now wouldn't you expect to find a man an awful crank
The Man from Eldorado
He's the man from Eldorado, and he's just arrived in town,
The man above was a murderer, the man below was a thief;
I strolled up old Bonanza, where I staked in ninety-eight,
Hark to the ewe that bore him:
I will not wash my face;
The sky is like an envelope,
I'm a homely little bit of tin and bone;
He was an old prospector with a vision bleared and dim.
In the little Crimson Manual it's written plain and clear
"Black is the sky, but the land is white--
We talked of yesteryears, of trails and treasure,
My rhymes are rough, and often in my rhyming
I've drifted, silver-sailed, on seas of dream,
Hearing afar the bells of Elfland chiming,
Seeing the groves of Arcadie agleam.
I was the thrall of Beauty that rejoices
From peak snow-diademed to regal star;
Yet to mine aerie ever pierced the voices,
The pregnant voices of the Things That Are.
The Here, the Now, the vast Forlorn around us;
The gold-delirium, the ferine strife;
The lusts that lure us on, the hates that hound us;
Our red rags in the patch-work quilt of Life.
The nameless men who nameless rivers travel,
And in strange valleys greet strange deaths alone;
The grim, intrepid ones who would unravel
The mysteries that shroud the Polar Zone.
These will I sing, and if one of you linger
Over my pages in the Long, Long Night,
And on some lone line lay a calloused finger,
Saying:  "It's human-true--it hits me right";
Then will I count this loving toil well spent;
Then will I dream awhile--content, content.
Men of the High North, the wild sky is blazing;
Islands of opal float on silver seas;
Swift splendors kindle, barbaric, amazing;
Pale ports of amber, golden argosies.
Ringed all around us the proud peaks are glowing;
Fierce chiefs in council, their wigwam the sky;
Far, far below us the big Yukon flowing,
Like threaded quicksilver, gleams to the eye.
Men of the High North, you who have known it;
You in whose hearts its splendors have abode;
Can you renounce it, can you disown it?
Can you forget it, its glory and its goad?
Where is the hardship, where is the pain of it?
Lost in the limbo of things you've forgot;
Only remain the guerdon and gain of it;
Zest of the foray, and God, how you fought!
You who have made good, you foreign faring;
You money magic to far lands has whirled;
Can you forget those days of vast daring,
There with your soul on the Top o' the World?
Nights when no peril could keep you awake on
Spruce boughs you spread for your couch in the snow;
Taste all your feasts like the beans and the bacon
Fried at the camp-fire at forty below?
Can you remember your huskies all going,
Barking with joy and their brushes in air;
You in your parka, glad-eyed and glowing,
Monarch, your subjects the wolf and the bear?
Monarch, your kingdom unravisht and gleaming;
Mountains your throne, and a river your car;
Crash of a bull moose to rouse you from dreaming;
Forest your couch, and your candle a star.
You who this faint day the High North is luring
Unto her vastness, taintlessly sweet;
You who are steel-braced, straight-lipped, enduring,
Dreadless in danger and dire in defeat:
Honor the High North ever and ever,
Whether she crown you, or whether she slay;
Suffer her fury, cherish and love her--
He who would rule he must learn to obey.
Men of the High North, fierce mountains love you;
Proud rivers leap when you ride on their breast.
See, the austere sky, pensive above you,
Children of Freedom, scornful of frontiers,
We who are weaklings honor your worth.
Lords of the wilderness, Princes of Pioneers,
Let's have a rouse that will ring round the earth.
One of the Down and Out--that's me.  Stare at me well, ay, stare!
Slouching along in smelly rags, a bleary-eyed, no-good bum;
A knight of the hollow needle, pard, spewed from the sodden slum.
Wet my throat--it's as dry as chalk, and seeing as how it's you,
and the hearts of men elate;
and the name of the brand was "Hell".
and the gold lust crazed us all.
Bold were we, and they called us three the "Unholy Trinity";
We were the discards of the pack, the foreloopers of Unrest,
Reckless spirits of fierce revolt in the ferment of the West.
We were bound to win and we revelled in the hardships of the way.
and we hoisted out the pay.
We were rich in a day beyond our dreams,
it was gold from the grass-roots down;
But I jeered at him, and then there came the Sailor Swede to me,
And he said:  "I dreamed of my sister's son,
who croaked at the age of three.
we would seek the lone moose trail.
The mighty river snatched us up and it bore us swift along;
Through the black canyon's angry foam we hurled to dreamy bars,
So we came at last to a tundra vast and dark and grim and lone;
Sorry of heart and sore of foot, weary men were we.
And you thought to hear with an outward ear
the things you thought to think.
Oh, it was wild and weird and wan, and ever in camp o' nights
and pierced with a blinding blaze.
like the tombstones of the dead.
And in and out and around about the little trail ran clear,
with a throbbing, thrilling flame;
Amber and rose and violet, opal and gold it came.
Pennants of silver waved and streamed, lazy banners unfurled;
We were climbing up a glacier in the neck of a mountain pass,
Go on, go on while the trail is good, and leave me down to die."
with a fixed and curious stare.
Then all at once he grabbed my gun and he put it to his head,
So we sewed him up in a canvas sack and we slung him to a tree;
And the Northern Lights in the crystal nights
came forth with a mystic gleam.
They danced and they danced the devil-dance over the naked snow;
It seemed to us, as we gazed aloft with an everlasting stare,
and I knew not where it went.
Day after day was sinister, and I fought fierce-eyed despair,
And the world around was purged of sound like a frozen continent.
Or they poised above the Polar rim like a coronal of flame.
There on the roof-pole of the world as one bewitched I gazed,
through the parka hood nigh blind;
There is a mountain round and low that lies by the Polar rim,
And I climbed its height in a whirl of light,
and I peered o'er its jagged brim;
And there in a crater deep and vast, ungained, unguessed of men,
The mystery of the Arctic world was flashed into my ken.
and I crawled like a sickly snail.
In that vast white world where the silent sky
communes with the silent snow,
In hunger and cold and misery I wandered to and fro.
But the Lord took pity on my pain, and He led me to the sea,
and the wandering wits of a child--
A craven, cowering bag of bones that once had been a man.
I'ts a million dollars a pound, they say,
and there's tons and tons in sight.
His cheeks were blanched as the flume-head foam
when the brown spring freshets flow;
Deep in their dark, sin-calcined pits were his sombre eyes aglow;
"Did ever you see such a skin?" quoth he;
"there's nought in the world so fine--
Such fullness of fur as black as the night,
such lustre, such size, such shine;
Ha!  Ha!  I'm laughing still.
"For look ye, the skin--it's as smooth as sin,
and black as the core of the Pit.
By gun or by trap, whatever the hap, I swore I would capture it;
By star and by star afield and afar, I hunted and would not quit.
"It sniffed and ran from the ptarmigan I had poisoned to excess;
where the carded clouds are curled.
"From the vastitudes where the world protrudes
through clouds like seas up-shoaled,
and the demon fox lay dead. . . .
Yet there was never a sign of wound, and never a drop he bled.
"So that was the end of the great black fox,
and here is the prize I've won;
they waited and watched for prey;
Put your faith in the mountain cat if you lie within his lair;
of a dance-hall wench beware!
Wherefore it was beyond all laws that lusts of man restrain,
A man drank deep and sank to sleep never to wake again;
The black fox skin a shadow cast from the roof nigh to the floor;
"The skin is mine, all mine," she cried; "I did the deed alone."
"It's share and share with a guilt-yoked pair",
he hissed in a pregnant tone;
And so they snarled like malamutes over a mildewed bone.
And so they fought, by fear untaught, till haply it befell
One dawn of day she slipped away to Dawson town to sell
She slipped away as still he lay, she clutched the wondrous fur;
Her pulses beat, her foot was fleet, her fear was as a spur;
She laughed with glee, she did not see him rise and follow her.
The bluffs uprear and grimly peer far over Dawson town;
They see its lights a blaze o' nights and harshly they look down;
The river chafed beneath its rind with many a mighty throe.
And up the swift and oozy drift a woman climbed in fear,
Clutching to her a black fox fur as if she held it dear;
And hard she pressed it to her breast--then Windy Ike drew near.
She made no moan--her heart was stone--she read his smiling face,
She rolled for nigh an hundred feet; she bounded like a ball;
A bird sang for the joy of spring, so piercing sweet and frail;
A wedge-faced man there was who ran along the river bank,
He travelled like a hunted thing, hard harried, sore distrest;
The old grandmother moon crept out from her cloud-quilted nest;
The aged mountains mocked at him in their primeval rest.
Grim shadows diapered the snow; the air was strangely mild;
The river writhed beneath the ice; it groaned like one in pain,
And yawning chasms opened wide, and closed and yawned again;
And sheets of silver heaved on high until they split in twain.
From out the road-house by the trail they saw a man afar
But they did not see him crash and sink into the icy flow;
They did not see him clinging there, gripped by the undertow,
Clawing with bleeding finger-nails at the jagged ice and snow.
They found a note beside the hole where he had stumbled in:
"Here met his fate by evil luck a man who lived in sin,
And to the one who loves me least I leave this black fox skin."
Though one man said he saw the tread of HOOFS deep in the ground.
_"The North has got him."_ --Yukonism.
I tried to refine that neighbor of mine, honest to God, I did.
I swore to prevail; I camped on his trail;
I plotted and planned for his good.
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;
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,
And, grabbing his gun with a leap and a run,
he threatened my face with the butt.
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;
by the stark and cadaverous snows.
The trees were like lace where the star-beams could chase,
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.
he was hatching out, early and late,
A system to bear through the frost-spangled air
the warm, crimson waves of his hate.
he was plotting me terrible ill.
I knew that he nursed a malice accurst,
like the blast of a winnowing flame;
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.
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.
as wildly it fled in the night;
And deathlike I lay till the dawn of the day.
(Was ever so welcome the light?)
all wrapped in a robe in his bunk.
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
then laid I my gun on his neck.
"for Christ's sake, Peter, don't shoot!"
that thinks he's a millionaire.
But it's all Gospel true what I'm telling to you--
up there where the Shadow falls--
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;
For Bill was a dainty kind of cuss, and his mind was mighty sot
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
So I thought of the contract I'd made with him,
and I took down from the shelf
through the crust of the pale blue snow;
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,
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.
and I gazed at the gruesome dead,
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?
As I sat there gazing at that stiff and studying what I'd do.
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 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.
and the Glories swept the sky;
As the Northlights gleamed and curved and streamed,
and the bottle of "hooch" was dry._
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;
About as fat as a chancel rat, and lo! despite my will,
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;
It gurgled near, and clear and clear and large and large it grew;
With the witless roll of a sodden soul it wantoned to my feet.
That you may note and gaze and gloat, and say `Revenge is sweet',
So sad it seemed, and its cheek-bones gleamed,
and its fingers flicked the shore;
_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._
Tellus, the brawny worker in iron, hairy and heavy of hand,
and damn her soul with a smile.
where the broom and the bracken meet;
Under a grave of oaks it was, hushed and drowsily sweet.
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,
Eager and winning in manner, full of such radiant charm,
Womenkind fought for his favor and loved to their uttermost harm.
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.
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."
Like a nun whose faith in the Virgin is met with a prurient jibe,
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,
(For passion ripens a woman as the sunshine ripens a peach).
He clenched his teeth into silence; he yielded up to her lure,
The morrow was come, and Tellus swiftly stole up the hill.
Heard he the low laugh of dalliance, heard he the rapture of sin.
No man kindle and joy in, no man on earth save he.
Was it a door that shattered, shell-like, under his blow?
Was it his saint, that strumpet, dishevelled and cowering low?
Then bound he the naked Philo with thongs that cut in the flesh,
Dragged her lover unto her under her frenzied stare.
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."
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,
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."_
Now wouldn't you expect to find a man an awful crank
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.
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,
For there in pencilled letters was the magic name of Peg.
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--
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.
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--
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;
The Man from Eldorado
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
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;
assistant
Sure, a continuation for this poem could be:
  He has taxed himself to sickness, dark and damp and double shift,
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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
But no; they brewed me the green-spruce tea,
and nursed me there like a child;
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.
through the crust of the hollow snow;
And oftentimes I would die the death, yet wake up to life anew;
and furrow my cheeks like dew.
And the camps we made when their strength outplayed
and the day was pinched and wan;
and sorely their backs were bowed.
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.
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.
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;
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,
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;
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.
There's the gold in millions, millions, but I haven't got a cent;
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.
That heaps my heart with eager hope, that glimmers on before--
My dream that will uplift me to the last.
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.
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;
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.
_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;
"Six months hard and dismissed, sir."  Isn't that rather hell?
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;
But the one that cooked my bacon was Grubbe, of the City Patrol.
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.
Where I have been won't matter; what I have seen I won't tell.
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.
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;
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 sky is like an envelope,
One of those blue official things;
And, sealing it, to mock our hope,
The moon, a silver wafer, clings.
What shall we find when death gives leave
To read--our sentence or reprieve?_
Face to face with my soul-self, weighing my life at its worth;
Wondering what I was made for, here in my last retreat.
Last!  Ah, yes, it's the finish.  Have ever you heard a man cry?
And I think it's only the river that keeps me from going mad.
By day it's a ruthless monster, a callous, insatiate thing,
With oily bubble and eddy, with sudden swirling of breast;
By night it's a writhing Titan, sullenly murmuring,
Ever and ever goaded, and ever crying for rest.
It cries for its human tribute, but me it will never drown.
I've learned the lore of my river; my river obeys me well.
I hew and I launch my cordwood, and raft it to Dawson town,
Where wood means wine and women, and, incidentally, hell.
Hell and the anguish thereafter.  Here as I sit alone
I'd give the life I have left me to lighten some load of care:
(The bitterest part of the bitter is being denied to atone;
Lips that have mocked at Heaven lend themselves ill to prayer.)
_Impotent as a beetle pierced on the needle of Fate;
A wretch in a cosmic death-cell, peaks for my prison bars;
'Whelmed by a world stupendous, lonely and listless I wait,
Drowned in a sea of silence, strewn with confetti of stars_.
See! from far up the valley a rapier pierces the night,
The white search-ray of a steamer.  Swiftly, serenely it nears;
A proud, white, alien presence, a glittering galley of light,
Confident-poised, triumphant, freighted with hopes and fears.
I look as one looks on a vision; I see it pulsating by;
I glimpse joy-radiant faces; I hear the thresh of the wheel.
Maybe you've seen me sometimes; maybe you've pitied me then--
The lonely waif of the wood-camp, here by my cabin door.
Some day you'll look and see not; futile and outcast of men,
I shall be far from your pity, resting forevermore.
_My life was a problem in ciphers, a weary and profitless sum.
Slipshod and stupid I worked it, dazed by negation and doubt.
(With apologies to the singer of the "Song of the Banjo".)
I'm a homely little bit of tin and bone;
I'm beloved by the Legion of the Lost;
I haven't got a "vox humana" tone,
And a dime or two will satisfy my cost.
I don't attempt your high-falutin' flights;
I am more or less uncertain on the key;
But I tell you, boys, there's lots and lots of nights
When you've taken mighty comfort out of me.
I weigh an ounce or two, and I'm so small
You can pack me in the pocket of your vest;
And when at night so wearily you crawl
Into your bunk and stretch your limbs to rest,
You take me out and play me soft and low,
The simple songs that trouble your heartstrings;
The tunes you used to fancy long ago,
Before you made a rotten mess of things.
Then a dreamy look will come into your eyes,
And you break off in the middle of a note;
And then, with just the dreariest of sighs,
You drop me in the pocket of your coat.
But somehow I have bucked you up a bit;
And, as you turn around and face the wall,
You don't feel quite so spineless and unfit--
You're not so bad a fellow after all.
Do you recollect the bitter Arctic night;
Your camp beside the canyon on the trail;
Your tent a tiny square of orange light;
The moon above consumptive-like and pale;
Your supper cooked, your little stove aglow;
You tired, but snug and happy as a child?
Then 'twas "Turkey in the Straw" till your lips were nearly raw,
And you hurled your bold defiance at the Wild.
Do you recollect the flashing, lashing pain;
The gulf of humid blackness overhead;
The lightning making rapiers of the rain;
The cattle-horns like candles of the dead
You sitting on your bronco there alone,
In your slicker, saddle-sore and sick with cold?
Do you think the silent herd did not hear "The Mocking Bird",
Or relish "Silver Threads among the Gold"?
Do you recollect the wild Magellan coast;
The head-winds and the icy, roaring seas;
The nights you thought that everything was lost;
The days you toiled in water to your knees;
The frozen ratlines shrieking in the gale;
The hissing steeps and gulfs of livid foam:
Let the jammy banjo voice the Younger Son,
Who waits for his remittance to arrive;
I represent the grimy, gritty one,
Who sweats his bones to keep himself alive;
Who's up against the real thing from his birth;
Whose heritage is hard and bitter toil;
I voice the weary, smeary ones of earth,
The helots of the sea and of the soil.
I'm the Steinway of strange mischief and mischance;
I'm the Stradivarius of blank defeat;
In the down-world, when the devil leads the dance,
I am simply and symbolically meet;
I'm the irrepressive spirit of mankind;
I'm the small boy playing knuckle down with Death;
I'm a humble little bit of tin and horn;
I'm a byword, I'm a plaything, I'm a jest;
The virtuoso looks on me with scorn;
But there's times when I am better than the best.
Ask the stoker and the sailor of the sea;
Ask the mucker and the hewer of the pine;
Ask the herder of the plain, ask the gleaner of the grain--
There's a lowly, loving kingdom--and it's mine.
Fearless, unfound, unfitted, far from the night and the cold,
Heard we the clarion summons, followed the master-lure--Gold!
Never was seen such an army, pitiful, futile, unfit;
Never was seen such a spirit, manifold courage and grit.
Never has been such a cohort under one banner unrolled
The spectral shores flitted past us, and every whirl of the screw
Do with the gold when we got it--big, shiny nuggets like plums,
There in the sand of the river, gouging it out with our thumbs.
And one man wanted a castle, another a racing stud;
Leaping to wealth in our visions long ere the trail began.
We landed in wind-swept Skagway.  We joined the weltering mass,
Clamoring over their outfits, waiting to climb the Pass.
Gone was the joy of our faces, grim and haggard and pale;
Step by step to the summit in the bale of the winter days.
Floundering deep in the sump-holes, stumbling out again;
Then from the depths of our travail, ere our spirits were broke,
Grim, tenacious and savage, the lust of the trail awoke.
"Klondike or bust!" rang the slogan; every man for his own.
Oh, how we flogged the horses, staggering skin and bone!
Oh, how we cursed their weakness, anguish they could not tell,
Oh, we were brutes and devils, goaded by lust and fear!
Never will I forget it, there on the mountain face,
Antlike, men with their burdens, clinging in icy space;
Dogged, determined and dauntless, cruel and callous and cold,
Cursing, blaspheming, reviling, and ever that battle-cry--"Gold!"
Shapeless, grotesque, lopsided, flimsy, makeshift and crude,
Each man after his fashion builded as best he could.
Each man worked like a demon, as prow to rudder we raced;
Stake in the Great White Channel, stake ere the best be gone.
The greed of the gold possessed us; pity and love were forgot;
Covetous visions obsessed us; brother with brother fought.
Partner with partner wrangled, each one claiming his due;
Wrangled and halved their outfits, sawing their boats in two.
Thuswise we voyaged Lake Bennett, Tagish, then Windy Arm,
Sinister, savage and baleful, boding us hate and harm.
Many a scow was shattered there on that iron shore;
Many a heart was broken straining at sweep and oar.
We roused Lake Marsh with a chorus, we drifted many a mile;
There was the canyon before us--cave-like its dark defile;
The shores swept faster and faster; the river narrowed to wrath;
Waters that hissed disaster reared upright in our path.
Leaping and boiling and seething, saw we a cauldron afume;
There was the rage of the rapids, there was the menace of doom.
Then with the crash of a demon springs to the onset again.
Dared we that ravening terror; heard we its din in our ears;
Then there were days of drifting, breezes soft as a sigh;
The moonlit stream was a python, silver, sinuous, vast,
That writhed on a shroud of velvet--well, it was done at last.
There were the tents of Dawson, there the scar of the slide;
Swiftly we poled o'er the shallows, swiftly leapt o'er the side.
Fires fringed the mouth of Bonanza; sunset gilded the dome;
_He was an old prospector with a vision bleared and dim.
He asked me for a grubstake, and the same I gave to him.
He hinted of a hidden trove, and when I made so bold
To question his veracity, this is the tale he told._
"I do not seek the copper streak, nor yet the yellow dust;
I am not fain for sake of gain to irk the frozen crust;
Let fellows gross find gilded dross, far other is my mark;
Oh, gentle youth, this is the truth--I go to seek the Ark.
"I prospected the Pelly bed, I prospected the White;
The Nordenscold for love of gold I piked from morn till night;
Afar and near for many a year I led the wild stampede,
Until I guessed that all my quest was vanity and greed.
"Then came I to a land I knew no man had ever seen,
A haggard land, forlornly spanned by mountains lank and lean;
The nitchies said 'twas full of dread, of smoke and fiery breath,
"But I was made all unafraid, so, careless and alone,
Day after day I made my way into that land unknown;
"I rose at dawn; I wandered on.  'Tis somewhat fine and grand
To be alone and hold your own in God's vast awesome land;
Come woe or weal, 'tis fine to feel a hundred miles between
The trails you dare and pathways where the feet of men have been.
"And so it fell on me a spell of wander-lust was cast.
The land was still and strange and chill, and cavernous and vast;
And on his track, all bent of back, had crawled the hairy men.
Until I came where sudden flame uplit a terraced height,
A regnant peak that seemed to seek the coronal of night.
"I scaled the peak; my heart was weak, yet on and on I pressed.
Skyward I strained until I gained its dazzling silver crest;
And there I found, with all around a world supine and stark,
Swept clean of snow, a flat plateau, and on it lay--the Ark.
"Yes, there, I knew, by two and two the beasts did disembark,
And so in haste I ran and traced in letters on the Ark
My human name--Ben Smith's the same.  And now I want to float
A syndicate to haul and freight to town that noble boat."
_I met him later in a bar and made a gay remark
Anent an ancient miner and an option on the Ark.
He gazed at me reproachfully, as only topers can;
But what he said I can't repeat--he was a bad old man._
In the little Crimson Manual it's written plain and clear
That who would wear the scarlet coat shall say good-bye to fear;
Shall be a guardian of the right, a sleuth-hound of the trail--
In the little Crimson Manual there's no such word as "fail"--
The Scarlet Rider makes reply:  "It's duty--to the death."
And so they sweep the solitudes, free men from all the earth;
And so they sentinel the woods, the wilds that know their worth;
And so they scour the startled plains and mock at hurt and pain,
And read their Crimson Manual, and find their duty plain.
Knights of the lists of unrenown, born of the frontier's need,
Disdainful of the spoken word, exultant in the deed;
Unconscious heroes of the waste, proud players of the game,
Props of the power behind the throne, upholders of the name:
Livid-lipped was the valley, still as the grave of God;
Misty shadows of mountain thinned into mists of cloud;
Deep in the trench of the valley two men stationed the Post,
Seymour and Clancy the reckless, fresh from the long patrol;
Seymour, the sergeant, and Clancy--Clancy who made his boast
He could cinch like a bronco the Northland,
and cling to the prongs of the Pole.
Two lone men on detachment, standing for law on the trail;
Undismayed in the vastness, wise with the wisdom of old--
Up sprang the red-haired Clancy, lean and eager of eye;
Loaded the long toboggan, strapped each dog at its post;
Whirled his lash at the leader; then, with a whoop and a cry,
Into the Great White Silence faded away like a ghost.
The clouds were a misty shadow, the hills were a shadowy mist;
Sunless, voiceless and pulseless, the day was a dream of woe;
Through the ice-rifts the river smoked and bubbled and hissed;
Behind was a trail fresh broken, in front the untrodden snow.
Ahead of the dogs ploughed Clancy, haloed by steaming breath;
Through peril of open water, through ache of insensate cold;
Up rivers wantonly winding in a land affianced to death,
Till he came to a cowering cabin on the banks of the Nordenscold.
_"I panned and I panned in the shiny sand,
and I sniped on the river bar;
But I know, I know, that it's down below
that the golden treasures are;
So I'll wait and wait till the floods abate,
and I'll sink a shaft once more,
And I'd like to bet that I'll go home yet
with a brass band playing before."_
Lifted him on the toboggan, wrapped him in robes of fur,
Then with the dogs sore straining started to face the Wild.
Pile up my snows to stay him; then when his strength is spent,
Leap on him from my ambush and crush him under my feet.
"Him will I ring with my silence, compass him with my cold;
Closer and closer clutch him unto mine icy breast;
Buffet him with my blizzards, deep in my snows enfold,
Claiming his life as my tribute, giving my wolves the rest."
_"Sing hey, sing ho, for the ice and snow,
And a heart that's ever merry;
Let us trim and square with a lover's care
(For why should a man be sorry?)
A grave deep, deep, with the moon a-peep,
A grave in the frozen mould.
Sing hey, sing ho, for the winds that blow,
And a grave deep down in the ice and snow,
A grave in the land of gold."_
Day after day of darkness, the whirl of the seething snows;
Day after day of blindness, the swoop of the stinging blast;
On through a blur of fury the swing of staggering blows;
On through a world of turmoil, empty, inane and vast.
Night with its writhing storm-whirl, night despairingly black;
Night with its hours of terror, numb and endlessly long;
Night with its weary waiting, fighting the shadows back,
Cold with its creeping terror, cold with its sudden clinch;
Cold so utter you wonder if 'twill ever again be warm;
Clancy grinned as he shuddered, "Surely it isn't a cinch
Being wet-nurse to a looney in the teeth of an arctic storm."
Ever by snowslide and ice-rip haunted and hovered the Fear;
Ever the Wild malignant poised and panted to slay.
The lead-dog freezes in harness--cut him out of the team!
The lung of the wheel-dog's bleeding--shoot him and let him lie!
On and on with the others--lash them until they scream!
"Pull for your lives, you devils!  On!  To halt is to die."
There in the frozen vastness Clancy fought with his foes;
The ache of the stiffened fingers, the cut of the snowshoe thong;
Colder it grew and colder, till the last heat left the earth,
And life was far and forgotten, the ghost of a joy once dreamed.
Death!  And one who defied it, a man of the Mounted Police;
Fought it there to a standstill long after hope was gone;
Grinned through his bitter anguish, fought without let or cease,
Suffering, straining, striving, stumbling, struggling on.
and the trail was so hard to see;
Far down the trail they saw him,
and his hands they were blanched like bone;
So Clancy got into Barracks, and the boys made rather a scene;
And the O. C. called him a hero, and was nice as a man could be;
_"When I go back to the old love that's true to the finger-tips,
I'll say:  `Here's bushels of gold, love,'
and I'll kiss my girl on the lips;
`It's yours to have and to hold, love.'
It's the proud, proud boy I'll be,
When I go back to the old love that's waited so long for me."_
_"Black is the sky, but the land is white--
(O the wind, the snow and the storm!)--
Father, where is our boy to-night?
Pray to God he is safe and warm."_
_"Mother, mother, why should you fear?
Safe is he, and the Arctic moon
Over his cabin shines so clear--
Rest and sleep, 'twill be morning soon."_
"It's getting dark awful sudden.  Say, this is mighty queer!
Nothing!  Just draw and valley packed with quiet and gloom;
Snow that comes down like feathers, thick and gobby and gray;
Night that looks spiteful ugly--seems that I've lost my way.
"The cold's got an edge like a jackknife--it must be forty below;
Its arms sweep round like a banshee's, swift and icily white,
And buffet and blind and beat me.  Lord! it's a hell of a night.
Oh, God! if I see the morning, if only I struggle through,
Say! did somebody holler?  Was it a light I saw?
Or was it only a notion?  I'll shout, and maybe they'll hear--
No! the wind only drowns me--shout till my throat is raw.
Play the game to the finish; bet on your very last card;
Nerve yourself for the struggle.  Oh, you coward, keep cool!
"I'm going to lick this blizzard; I'm going to live the night.
It can't down me with its bluster--I'm not the kind to be beat.
I know that my face is frozen; my hands are numblike and dead;
But oh, my feet keep a-moving, heavy and hard and slow;
Keep a-moving, a-moving; don't, don't stumble, you fool!
Curse this snow that's a-piling a-purpose to block my way.
It's heavy as gold in the rocker, it's white and fleecy as wool;
It's soft as a bed of feathers, it's warm as a stack of hay.
Curse on my feet that slip so, my poor tired, stumbling feet--
The awful wind cannot get me, deep, deep down in the drift."
_"Father, a bitter cry I heard,
Out of the night so dark and wild.
Why is my heart so strangely stirred?
'Twas like the voice of our erring child."_
_"Mother, mother, you only heard
A waterfowl in the locked lagoon--
Out of the night a wounded bird--
Rest and sleep, 'twill be morning soon."_
Who is it talks of sleeping?  I'll swear that somebody shook
Me hard by the arm for a moment, but how on earth could it be?
See how my feet are moving--awfully funny they look--
Moving as if they belonged to a someone that wasn't me.
The wind down the night's long alley bowls me down like a pin;
I stagger and fall and stagger, crawl arm-deep in the snow.
Beaten back to my corner, how can I hope to win?
And there is the blizzard waiting to give me the knockout blow.
Oh, I'm so warm and sleepy!  No more hunger and pain.
Just to rest for a moment; was ever rest such a joy?
Ha! what was that?  I'll swear it, somebody shook me again;
Somebody seemed to whisper:  "Fight to the last, my boy."
Still and still must I struggle, fight for the gift of life.
Seems that I must be dreaming!  Here is the old home trail;
Yonder a light is gleaming; oh, I know it so well!
The air is scented with clover; the cattle wait by the rail;
Father is through with the milking; there goes the supper-bell.
Mother, your boy is crying, out in the night and cold;
Let me in and forgive me, I'll never be bad any more:
_"Father, father, I saw a face
Pressed just now to the window-pane!
Oh, it gazed for a moment's space,
Wild and wan, and was gone again!"_
_"Mother, mother, you saw the snow
Drifted down from the maple tree
(Oh, the wind that is sobbing so!
Weary and worn and old are we)--
Only the snow and a wounded loon--
Rest and sleep, 'twill be morning soon."_
We talked of yesteryears, of trails and treasure,
Of men who played the game and lost or won;
Of mad stampedes, of toil beyond all measure,
Of camp-fire comfort when the day was done.
We talked of sullen nights by moon-dogs haunted,
Of bird and beast and tree, of rod and gun;
Of boat and tent, of hunting-trip enchanted
Beneath the wonder of the midnight sun;
Of bloody-footed dogs that gnawed the traces,
Of prisoned seas, wind-lashed and winter-locked;
The ice-gray dawn was pale upon our faces,
Yet still we filled the cup and still we talked.
The city street was dimmed.  We saw the glitter
Of moon-picked brilliants on the virgin snow,
And down the drifted canyon heard the bitter,
Relentless slogan of the winds of woe.
The city was forgot, and, parka-skirted,
We trod that leagueless land that once we knew;
We saw stream past, down valleys glacier-girted,
The wolf-worn legions of the caribou.
We smoked our pipes, o'er scenes of triumph dwelling;
Of deeds of daring, dire defeats, we talked;
And other tales that lost not in the telling,
Ere to our beds uncertainly we walked.
And so, dear friends, in gentler valleys roaming,
Perhaps, when on my printed page you look,
Your fancies by the firelight may go homing
To that lone land that haply you forsook.
And if perchance you hear the silence calling,
The frozen music of star-yearning heights,
Or, dreaming, see the seines of silver trawling
Across the sky's abyss on vasty nights,
You may recall that sweep of savage splendor,
That land that measures each man at his worth,
And feel in memory, half fierce, half tender,
The brotherhood of men that know the North.