-
yikes....H.S. lit flash backs....
Living in New England most of my life. I’ve always liked this poem. Makes me smile. “There’s nothing like finally being warm, huh Sam?”
Oh crap!
Another global warming screed.
Oh, I LOOOOOVE that poem! I used to have it memorized. Service spoke so eloquently on the hold the north has on us who live here. Thanks, Clive!
My Dad, deceased for many years, used to recite that to us.
On Friday nights, before he’d give us money to go to the skating rink, he’d tease us and say we had to recite it word for word to earn our “skatin” money.
Thanks for bringing back those wonderful memories.
http://www.mochinet.com/poets/service/index.cgi
Searchable database of Robert Service.
The work that has gone into compiling these poems into electronic format started with Project Gutenberg.
The first of Service’s books they compiled was
“The Spell of the Yukon” followed by one or two others.
Some of the books here have been shamelessly copied from
their archives and reformatted into HTML.
However, most of the works here have been typed up by
individuals devoted to preserving the memory and work
of Robert Service.
Two such people that I have immediate knowledge of, on
this regard, is Art Ude and Myself.
This one was one of my favorites. The “Shooting of Dan McGrew” was too.
Huddled here in the warmth of my little office against a cold and snowy New England day, I can still imagine Jean Shepherd reciting that poem over the transistor radio I kept under my pillow as a kid.
My favorite of his ... "The Law of the Yukon." It was an inspiration to one of my heroes, Jim Elliot (the young missionary pioneer in Ecuador) ... who took the words out of their earthy context and applied them to bold conquests for Christ.
This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain:
"Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane--
Strong for the red rage of battle; sane, for I harry them sore;
Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core;
Swift as the panther in triumph, fierce as the bear in defeat,
Sired of a bulldog parent, steeled in the furnace heat.
Send me the best of your breeding, lend me your chosen ones;
Them will I take to my bosom, them will I call my sons;
Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat;"
************
"And I will not be won by weaklings, subtle, suave and mild,
But by men with the hearts of vikings, and simple faith of a child;
Desperate, strong and resistless, unthrottled by fear or defeat,
Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat."
And then what happened?
My husband loves this poem.
Love it....AFAIK, I’m the only FReeper with a R.W. Service poem on my profile page :-D
Service is often recited here in Fairbanks, for tourists.
As a child, my mother read me Jack London’s “To Build A Fire”.
We both agreed that, while very good, it wasn’t exactly suitable as a bedtime story.
Chorus:
“Please Mother don’t stab Father with the BREAD-KNIFE,
Remember ‘twas a gift when you were wed.
But if you must stab Father with the BREAD-KNIFE,
Please Mother use another for the BREAD.”
***
one of my funny favorites
***
http://www.mochinet.com/poets/service/index.cgi?ListTitles=Bar-Room%20Ballads&Poem=45
When I was a little kid, my grandparents took my brothers and I from Washington, DC, up to Fairbanks, AK, to visit my greatgranmother.
We saw this play.
I remember my brother, as the protagonist struggled to get the corpse in the boiler, screamed out, “Well, stuff him IN!”
They made him part of the play.
For us who live in the far north, Robert Service says it for all of us. Definitely the “bard of the far north,” he was. He had an uncanny knack to put in words what we all know by instinct. “The Men who don’t Fit in,” for instance.
I’ve been to his (and Jack London’s)place of abode in Dawson and Whitehorse, Yukon Territory.