Favorite Poems
Okay, so this isn't great poetry. It was suggested as a fun poem.
The Cremation of Sam McGee
There are strange
things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails
have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern
Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on
the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
Now Sam McGee was
from Tennessee,
where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home
in the South to roam
'round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold,
but the land of gold
seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often
say in his homely way
that he'd "sooner live in Hell."
On a Christmas Day
we were mushing our way
over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold!
through the parka's fold
it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd
close, then the lashes froze
till sometimes we couldn't see,
It wasn't much fun,
but the only one
to whimper was Sam McGee.
And that very night,
as we lay packed tight
in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were
fed, and the stars o'head
were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and
"Cap," says he,
"I'll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I'm
asking you
won't refuse my last request."
Well he seemed so
low that I couldn't say no;
then he says with a sort of moan,
"It's the cursed
cold, and it's got right hold
till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet 'taint being
dead--it's my awful dread
of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to
swear that, foul or fair,
you'll cremate my last remains."
A pal's last need is
a thing to heed,
so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at
the streak of dawn;
but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the
sleigh, and he raved all day
of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall
a corpse was all
that was left of Sam McGee.
There wasn't a
breath in that land of death,
and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half
hid that I couldn't get rid,
because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the
sleigh, and it seemed to say:
"You may tax your brawn and brain,
But you promised
true, and it's up to you
to cremate these last remains."
Now a promise made
is a debt unpaid,
and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come,
though my lips were dumb,
in my heart how I cursed that load!
In the long, long
night by the lone firelight,
while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their
woes to the homeless snows--
Oh God, how I loathed the thing!
And every day that
quiet clay
seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went,
though the dogs were spent
and the grub was getting low.
The trail was bad,
and I felt half mad,
but I swore I would not give in;
And I'd often sing
to the hateful thing,
and it harkened with a grin.
Till I came to the
marge of Lake Lebarge,
and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the
ice, but I saw in a trice
it was called the Alice May.
And I looked at it,
and I thought a bit,
and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then "Here," said I,
with a sudden cry,
"is my cre-ma-tor-eum!"
Some planks I tore
from the cabin floor,
and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found
that was lying around,
and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just
soared, and the furnace roared--
such a blaze you seldom see,
And I burrowed a
hole in the glowing coal,
and I stuffed in Sam McGee.
Then I made a hike,
for I didn't like
to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens
scowled, and the huskies howled,
and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but
the hot sweat rolled
down my cheeks, and I don't know why;
And the greasy smoke
in an inky cloak
went streaking down the sky.
I do not know how
long in the snow
I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came
out and they danced about
ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with
dread, but I bravely said,
"I'll just take a peep inside.
I guess he's cooked,
and it's time I looked."
Then the door I opened wide.
And there sat Sam,
looking cool and calm,
in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile
you could see a mile,
and he said, "Please close the door.
It's fine in here,
but I greatly fear
you'll let in the cold and storm--
Since I left
Plumtree, down in Tennessee,
it's the first time I've been warm."
There are strange
things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails
have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern
Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on
the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
Robert W. Service
Approximately 1905