The Shooting of Dan McGrew and Other Poems [antikvár]

NoteThe Canadian poet, journaHst and noveHst Robert Service was born in Preston, England, in 1874 and died in Lancieux, France, in 1958. Although his literary career was a long and prolific oneincluding the novel The Trails of'98 (1910), two autobiographical works and journalistic coverage of the Balkan War (1912-13) and World War IService is today remembered chiefly for the popular ballads depicting the life of the gold prospector in the Klondike that were published in his first collection of verse, The Spell of the Yukon and Other Vferses (1907, originally titled Songs of a Sourdough). The present anthology contains not only such regularly anthologized pieces as "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee" (both from The Spell of the Yukon), but also many of the best-known poems from Services three subsequent collections: Ballads of a Cheechako (1909), Rhymes of a Rolling Stone (1912) and Rhymes of a Red Cross Man (1916). The 1916 volume departs markedly from the themes of the earlier works and reflects the poets experiences as an ambulance driver in France during World War I.The Spell of the YukonI wanted the gold, and I sought it;I scrabbled and mucked like a slave. Was it famine or scurvyI fought it;I hurled my youth into a grave. I wanted the gold, and I got itCame out with a fortune last fall, Yet somehow life's not what I thought it, And somehow the gold isn't all.No! There's the land. (Have you seen it?)It's the cussedest land that I know, From the big, dizzy mountains that screen itTo the deep, deathlike valleys below. Some say God was tired when He made it;Some say it's a fine land to shun; Maybe; but there's some as would trade it For no land on earthand I'm one.You come to get rich (damned good reason);You feel like an exile at first; You hate it like hell for a season,And then you are worse than the worst. It grips you like some kinds of sinning;It twists you from foe to a friend; It seems it's been since the beginning; It seems it will be to the end.I've stood in some mighty-mouthed hollowThat's plumb-full of hush to the brim; I've watched the big, husky sun wallow In crimson and gold, and grow dim, Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming, And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop; And I've thought that I surely was dreaming. With the peace o' the world piled on top.1