The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses
1907
These are not gentle nature poems. They are rough-hewn ballads told by firelight in a land where men went to disappear, and sometimes did. Robert W. Service wrote poetry the way a prospector tells stories: with grit, dark humor, and an unblinking eye toward the frozen catastrophe waiting just outside the door. The two legendary poems here - "The Cremation of Sam McGee" and "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" - are pitch-black comedies about men who make terrible decisions and pay for them in the ice. Other verses turn quieter, toward longing and the ache of vast, empty spaces. Service captures something true about the North: its savage beauty, its indifference to human ambition, and the peculiar freedom of a place where civilization's rules don't apply. This is poetry for people who swear they don't like poetry. It's storytelling at its most direct and thrilling.
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“Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;Let us journey to a lonely land I know.There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam to guide us,And the Wild is calling, calling...let us go””
— Robert W. Service
“There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting; It’s luring me on as of old; Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting So much as just finding the gold. It’s the great, big, broad land ’way up yonder, It’s the forests where silence has lease; It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder, It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.””
— Robert W. Service
“Have you suffered, starved and triumphed, grovelled down, yet grasped at glory,Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole? 'Done things' just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story,Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul? Have you seen God in His splendours, heard the text that nature renders?(You'll never hear it in the family pew.) The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things–Then listen to the wild–it's calling you.””
— Robert W. Service
“There’s a land”
— Robert W. Service
“The Men That Don't Fit In There's a race of men that don't fit in, A race that can't stay still; So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will. They range the field and they rove the flood, And they climb the mountain's crest; Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood, And they don't know how to rest. If they just went straight they might go far; They are strong and brave and true; But they're always tired of the things that are, And they want the strange and new. They say: "Could I find my proper groove, What a deep mark I would make!" So they chop and change, and each fresh move Is only a fresh mistake. And each forgets, as he strips and runs With a brilliant, fitful pace, It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones Who win in the lifelong race. And each forgets that his youth has fled, Forgets that his prime is past, Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead, In the glare of the truth at last. He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance; He has just done things by half. Life's been a jolly good joke on him, And now is the time to laugh. Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost; He was never meant to win; He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone; He's a man who won't fit in.””
— Robert W. Service
“On the ragged edge of the world I'll roam. And the home of the wolf will be my home.””
— Robert W. Service
“I have clinched and closed with the naked North, I have learned to defy and defend;Shoulder to shoulder we have fought it out”
— Robert W. Service
“A star or a soul is a part of the whole,And weft in the wondrous plan.””
— Robert W. Service
“With the raw-ribbed Wild that abhors all life, the Wild that would crush and rend,I have clinched and closed with the naked North, I have learned to defy and defend;Shoulder to shoulder we have fought it out”
— Robert W. Service
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<a href="https://lex-books.com/book/the-spell-of-the-yukon-and-other-verses-0acb7655-0fc3-45c8-a11c-386ad10aecc9"><img src="https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg" alt="Read The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses by Robert W. Service free on Lex" width="160" height="40"></a>[](https://lex-books.com/book/the-spell-of-the-yukon-and-other-verses-0acb7655-0fc3-45c8-a11c-386ad10aecc9)[url=https://lex-books.com/book/the-spell-of-the-yukon-and-other-verses-0acb7655-0fc3-45c8-a11c-386ad10aecc9][img]https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg[/img][/url]Read The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses by Robert W. Service free on Lex: https://lex-books.com/book/the-spell-of-the-yukon-and-other-verses-0acb7655-0fc3-45c8-a11c-386ad10aecc9Cite this book
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Service, Robert W.. The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-spell-of-the-yukon-and-other-verses-0acb7655-0fc3-45c8-a11c-386ad10aecc9.Service, R. W. (1907). The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-spell-of-the-yukon-and-other-verses-0acb7655-0fc3-45c8-a11c-386ad10aecc9Service, Robert W.. The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-spell-of-the-yukon-and-other-verses-0acb7655-0fc3-45c8-a11c-386ad10aecc9.
