Here are a few more of Robert Service's Poems. As a child my father would read me The Cremation of Sam Mcgee, The Shooting of Dan McGrew and The Ice Worm Cocktail. When I got older I decided to read the book from cover to cover. I doubt I ever really made it, the book is quite thick, but I found many more poems that I liked. In general I am not a huge poetry fan but Robert Service is great.
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows --O God! how I loathed the thing.
Then you've a hunch what the music meant . . . hunger and night and the stars.
The cruel war was over -- oh, the triumph was so sweet!
They are coming -- it's the Army of the Dead."
The limb that trailed, the hand that failed, the bloody finger tips!
Colenso -- we're the men who had to pay.
They were coming in their thousands -- oh, would they never cease!
I closed my eyes, and then -- it was a dream.
I wanted the gold, and I sought it, I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy -- I fought it; I hurled my youth into a grave.
Yet somehow life's not what I thought it, And somehow the gold isn't all.
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
Maybe; but there's some as would trade it For no land on earth -- and I'm one.
You hate it like hell for a season, And then you are worse than the worst.
It seems it's been since the beginning; It seems it will be to the end.
And I've thought that I surely was dreaming, With the peace o' the world piled on top.
The grayling aleap in the river, The bighorn asleep on the hill.
The freshness, the freedom, the farness -- O God! how I'm stuck on it all.
The cold fear that follows and finds you, The silence that bludgeons you dumb.
The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery, I've bade 'em good-by -- but I can't.
There's a land -- oh, it beckons and beckons, And I want to go back -- and I will.
They're making my money diminish; I'm sick of the taste of champagne.
Thank God! when I'm skinned to a finish I'll pike to the Yukon again.
And it's better than this by a damsite -- So me for the Yukon once more.
It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder, It's the stillness that fills me with peace.
"You're sick of the game!" Well, now that's a shame.
Just draw on your grit, it's so easy to quit.
It's the keeping-your chin-up that's hard.
Why that's the best game of them all!