Day 207 | Monday, 12 October 2020

Day 207 - Audio Version

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​Day 207  |  Monday, 12 October 2020     
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From the Church Mouse

For the past several weeks, Doug and I have watched the weather slowly change from summer to fall. The evenings became cooler, the skies were often heavy with the gray-purple clouds of the approaching fall season, farmers cut their corn and hay, the Amish piled their oats in those characteristic shocks, the sun set earlier, and I began to exchange sandals and light shirts for sneakers and sweaters and retrieved my favorite Scotland hoodie from the back closet.

As my mind wrapped itself around the fall season, I couldn’t help but move on to the icy, sleety, windy, blizzardy ( is that a word?), cold, colder, coldest, brutal……You know what I mean. From there, in a snow bank, I was thinking of what to share with you this Monday. I was 15 years old again, a freshman in high school, listening to my very cool principal address us newbies in an assembly. At the end, he drew a tall step stool to the middle of the stage, sat down, and treated us to a poem which brought all his assemblies to an end. By my senior year I had it memorized. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. Robert Service was the poet.
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 Robert William Service was born on Jan. 16, 1874 in Preston, Lancashire, England of Scottish parents. He spent his childhood in Scotland and attended the University of Glasgow. His vagabond career took him throughout the world, with a diversity of jobs from cook to clerk, from hobo to correspondent. He was a popular verse writer called “the Canadian Kipling” for rollicking ballads of the “frozen North.” Service is best known for his poems "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee", from his first book, Songs of a Sourdough (1907; also published as The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses).He died on Sept. 11, 1958, in Lancieux, France).

The Cremation of Sam McGee
BY ROBERT W. SERVICE

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