|
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.
...............From `The Cremation of Sam McGee' by
Robert
Service
Were you ever out in the Great Alone,
when the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in
with a silence you most could hear;
With only the howl of the timber wolf,
and you camped there in the cold,
A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world,
clean mad for the muck called gold;
While high overhead, green yellow and red,
the North Lights swept in bars?--
Then you've a hunch what the music meant . . .
hunger and night and the stars.
................From `The Shooting of Dan McGrew' by
Robert
Service
They rippled green with a wonderous sheen,
they fluttered out like a fan;
They spread the blaze of rose-pink rays
never yet seen of man.
They writhed like a brood of angry snakes,
hissing and sulphur pale;
Then swift they changed to a dragon vast,
lashing a cloven tale.
...............From `The Ballad of the Northern Lights' by
Robert
Service
Raw Recuit
More of Robert Service.
Still more of Robert
Service, including readings by his own voice.
|