Collected Poems of Robert Service

by Robert W. Service

No writings quite like those of Robert Service! A must for every Service afficionado!

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Literature, Fiction, Canada

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1907

About the author

This author is the the British-Canadian writer of Yukon poetry. For the British historian of modern Russia, see Robert Service.

Robert William Service was born into a Scottish family while they were living in Preston, England. He was schooled in Scotland, attending Hillhead High School in Glasgow. He moved to Canada at the age of 21 when he gave up his job working in a Glasgow bank, and traveled to Vancouver Island, British Columbia with his Buffalo Bill outfit and dreams of becoming a cowboy.

He drifted around western North America, taking and quitting a series of jobs. Hired by the Canadian Bank of Commerce, he worked in a number of its branches before being posted to the branch in Whitehorse (not Dawson) in the Yukon Territory in 1904, six years after the Klondike Gold Rush. Inspired by the vast beauty of the Yukon wilderness, Service began writing poetry about the things he saw.

Conversations with locals led him to write about things he hadn't seen, many of which hadn't actually happened, as well. He did not set foot in Dawson City until 1908, arriving in the Klondike ten years after the Gold Rush, but his renown as a writer was already established.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Service.

Reviews

[Terry Bonner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Come on now. In your heart of hearts, you love Robert Service's poetry. I have been reading and rereading it since I was ten, when my first employer, a warm-hearted and literary Southern gentleman named Frank Raulston, would sometimes recite long passages from memory. I have encountered many men throughout this continent from all walks of life with whom I have formed a lasting bond and instant rapport simply because we shared a stanza from Robert Service. His work is not majestic or profound, but it is accessible and elegant. It's a pity that he has fallen out of vogue with more recent generations.

[Arah-Lynda · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.


Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms
and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam ‘round the Pole,
God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like
a spell;
Though he’d often say in his homely way that “he’d sooner live
in hell.”

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Daw-
son trail.
Talk of your cold! Through the parka’s fold it stabbed like a
driven nail.
If our eyes we’d close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we
couldn’t see;
It wasn’t much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam
McGee

And that very night as we lay packed tight in our robes be-
neath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o’erhead were dancing
heel and toe,
He turned to me and “Cap” says he, “I’ll cash in this trip, I
guess;
And if I do I’m asking that you won’t refuse my last request.”

Well he seemed so low that I couldn’t say no, then he says with
a sort of moan:
“It’s the cursed cold, and it’s got right hold till I’m chilled clean
through to the bone.
Yet ‘tain’t being dead – it’s my awful dread of the icy grave
that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you’ll cremate my last
remains.”

A pal’s last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked
ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home
in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam
McGee.

There wasn’t a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-
driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn’t get rid, because of a
promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh and it seemed to say: “You may tax
your brawn and brains,
But you promised true and it’s up to you to cremate those last
remains.”

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own
stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart
how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies,
round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows – O God! how
I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier
grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub, was
getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not
give in;
And I’d often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with
a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there
lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the
“Alice May.”
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen
chum;
Then “Here,” said I, with a sudden cry, “ is my cre-ma-tor-eum.”

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler
fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel
higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared – such a blaze you
seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in
Sam McGee

Then I made a hike, for I didn’t like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind
began to blow,
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I
don’t know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down
the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ven-
tured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said; “I’ll just take a peep
inside.
I guess he’s cooked and it’s time I looked”; . . . then the door
I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the
furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: “Please
close that door.
It’s fine in here, but I greatly fear you’ll let in the cold and
storm –
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it’s the first time I’ve
been warm.”


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.

Happy Canada Day Good Readers!

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I get older, I become more tolerant of poetry. Most of its too flightly or symbolic for me though, and I prefer it to tell a story, so when its not I often skip over it. That is not the case with this collection. Robert Service is known as the Bard of the North, and as the people’s poet. He really write so that everyone can understand, but its still so beautiful. He captures the deadly beauty of the Yukon, the tenacity of the human spirit, the weakness of the human condition. His poems about his service in WWI are particularly poignant.

My father used to sit around out campfire and recite from memory the Cremation of Sam McGee. I’m currently in the process of trying to memorize that one, as well as “The Men that Don’t Fit In.” If you are anything like me, Service’s poems sing to you in a way, in a language that few people understand.

Parts of this collection are provided for free as an audiobook by Librivox.org

[Cindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I let you in on a secret I took this book out of the library in my elementary school year I was probably in grade 7 and I never returned it because it held so much meaning to me, it made such a big impact on me that I just could not part with it. Robert Service's poems is poetry that lasts forever in your heart and makes you look at poetry differently from there on.
A magical ride of beauty and literacy that is sure to create a long love of the genre.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not much of a poetry lover but, when I am, I'm quite traditional in that I like it to rhyme! I was drawn to these poems because they were referred to quite a bit in The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah. Having loved the book and in particular the Alaskan setting, I was looking forward to reading some poems reflecting the harsh environment and rugged characters you would expect populated Alaska in the early days - and I was not disappointed! Not only were there poems of people struggling to survive against the worst elements nature could throw at them but there were also lots of humorous tales. This particular volume also featured collections of poems set during the First World War ('Rhymes of a Red Cross Man') and ones set in Paris in the run-up to that conflict. I really enjoyed this collection, reading 30-40 pages a day, and there were several which were really humorous, clever and descriptive. It would be the sort of book of poems I would keep on my shelf - sadly, this was one I obtained from the library. Surprised that I've never heard of him before but have done since as he apparently is also the author of biographies of Russian leaders (Trotsky, Lenin & Stalin) - 9/10.

[Diane Callaway · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wore out two copies of this book as a child

[Liam Guilar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't think the poem quoted above (on Goodreads) instead of a book description is in this book?

There was a time when all kinds of people, many with no interest in poetry, quoted Service and Kipling and Omar K and then it became very unfashionable.

Service never called himself a poet and wrote strictly metrical rhyming verse. 'Songs of A Sourdough', is probably his best individual collection and contains most of the poems he's famous for; poems about the Yukon Gold Rush of the 1890s.

Even if you take things like "The Law of the Yukon" with a pinch of salt and know he didn't actually dig gold during the Gold Rush and his trapper/miner/tramp persona is a fiction, 'The Trail of 98' has the best description of running rapids I've ever read, Dan McGrew and Sam McGee have entertained camp fires on several continents and he evokes the strange attraction of the stark natural beauty of wild landscapes in simple memorable terms.

The Collected trails away as it goes on, the sentimentality which is mostly under control in the Yukon poems starts to take over and the faintly archaic diction starts to grate. The rhyming becomes forced and obvious and the music of the early poems, his ability to create a line that sticks in the reader's head for a life time, deserted him. The Yukon gave him a subject matter that suited his talents. But for the great pieces he did write, most of which are in here, five stars.

from: The Spell of the Yukon

There's a land where the mountains are nameless
And the rivers all run God knows where
There are lives that are erring and aimless
And deaths that hang by a hair,
There are hardships that nobody reckons
There are valleys unpeopled and still
There's a land-it beckons and beckons
And i want to go back-And I will

[Kerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I went on a fantastic canoe trip in British Columbia. Our guide recited Robert Service by campfirelight and I've been hooked every since. Robert Service wrote rambling story poems that were drawn from his experiences in the far north of Canada.

Poetry to read aloud, memorize and share with kids. Great stuff here.

[Jetta · Rating 5 out of 5]

All kinds of poetry from the bar room ballads of the Yukon to the Bohemian quatrians of Paris. Humorous as well as meloncholy, fanciful and brutally honest. All in one collection spanning 3 decades. Includes "Rhymes of a Red Cross Man" the best selling non-ficton work in 1916.

[Nomad · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a race of men who don't fit in.....A race that can't be still...so,they break the heart of kith and kin and rome the world at will..........Robert Service.........nomad

[Chris Sherman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A gem. Alaskan poems that are so "American" you have gold dust behind your ears, Mississippi mud in your socks, and an arrow through your heart when you finish just a few of these.

[Al · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert Service was an adventurer who roamed the world, living and working in France, the Yukon, serving as an ambulance driver in WW I, and passing through too many other places to be mentioned. His poetry (dismissed by some as doggerel, but called verse by Service) is inimitable, evocative of the places he lived, ranging from stories of people and places to heart-felt romance and tributes. This is a lengthy book, to be sampled rather than read through. It's only one of several sizable collections of Service's work. How he managed to produce this body of work is beyond me. His verse is probably not for everyone, but I loved it.

[Zach Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

an underrated poet (though kinda racist unfortunately). absolutely adored his works though.

[Gusmenary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Immediately after hearing The Cremation of Sam Mcgee when I was ten I checked it out of the library and memorized it. I still know it entirely word for word. AAnd although the same can't be said for The Shooting of Sam Mcgraw, The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill, Clancy of the Mounties or The Spell of the Yukon they are all my among my favorite works of poetry.

"You are but a beat in times great heart"

Robert Service. Beautiful.

[Gloria · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know many people dismiss Service as "cowboy" poetry, but if you read his entire collection, it's quite varied. The fact that this man has so many life experiences from which to draw makes his poetry that much more appealing to me.
And "The Mountain and the Lake" still remains one of my favorite poems of all time.

[Magnus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always loved the poetry of Robert W. Service as did my father before me and independently of both of us, my brother too. I little realised as a child that one day I would marry and move to the USA where my new Father in Law would recite these cherished poems for audiences. Fate eh?

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh, how I love each line of it!
That Little Book I Never Wrote.

This is a collection of books, but I don’t think they’re in chronological order. The first book seems far for polished than the final; in fact, they might be in chronological order but in reverse.

The strangest are the songs tacked on to the end of the final book; partly because it doesn’t include the music, but mostly because they seem to scan no better than most of the other poems in the collection. As Service notes multiple times, he is slave to neither meter, rhyme, nor theme. He can go from a love ballad to an ode to the frozen north, to a love ballad in the frozen north, from anti-war to pro-heroics back to so anti-war that the poem’s viewpoint narrator would rather suffer under violent tyranny than risk violent resistance. Nor is the latter, or anything else, apparently a satirical viewpoint; whatever he chooses to write, he chooses to believe for the duration of the poem. It is both frustrating and commendable.

I am no wordsmith dripping words divine
Into the golden chalice of a sonnet;
If love songs witch you, close this book of mine,
Waste no time on it.

It is not true, of course, that he doesn’t write love songs; read “Barb-Wire Bill” for one of the best. These were made for reading aloud, and barely could I finish it, what with my eyes acloud.

He also may have one of the earliest examples of the manic pixie dream girl in “?”.

When he’s on top of his game, his poetry of the sourdough or adventurer embody sharp psychological insights worth remembering.

Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting/So much as just finding the gold.
…
We could bear the famine worthily/but we lost our heads at the feast.

The famine, and the finding of the gold, is a worthy calling because it is dangerous.

“Sing hey, sing ho, for the winds that blow,
And a grave deep down in the ice and snow,
A grave in the land of gold.”

(Yes, that’s quoted because it’s a poem within a poem: “Clancy of the Mounted Police.”)

Or when, in “Good-Bye, Little Cabin” he writes that the sadness of leaving a broken-down old home is the “Youth that I’m leaving behind.”

And it doesn’t stop when he reaches World War I.

I’ve ’ad more thoughts on a sentry-go
Than I used to ’ave in a year.

When he’s writing of the man of the wild, he’s almost the Kipling of the western hemisphere—and he praises Kipling as one of the few books on his (or his poem’s narrator’s) shelf later—as when he writes of “The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things—” in “The Call of the Wild”.

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 a gleam to guide us,
And the Wild is calling, calling… let us go.

Or, in the ending to Book Two, “Ballads of a Cheechako”:

You may recall that sweep of savage splendor,
That land that measures each man at his worth.
And feel in memory, half fierce, half tender,
The brotherhood of men that know the North.

He’s also a master of the winding joke, as when men take shares in the growth of hair on a bald man’s head in “The Baldness of Chewed-Ear”. And the necessity of keeping soldiers supplied with a good smoke in his ode to nicotine, “The Black Dudeen”.

And while I tend to prefer the more polished poetry of the first few books, there’s a lot to be said for his bohemian years in Europe (mostly France), “when we were fools divinely wise”:

When scores of Philistines we slew
As mightily with brush and pen
We sought to make the world anew,
And scorned the gods of other men;

Or “The Release”, about the thanks we never give.

The notes in Ballads of a Bohemian which lead up to the Great War are as interesting as the poetry, especially when he writes about the start of the war, when he was living in France and all of his French friends disappeared from the country town he’d escaped to, leaving only the “graybeards, women and children.” He and his friend cannot return to Paris because “the railway is mobilized… great things are doing and I am out of it. I am thoroughly unhappy.”

It takes me forever to read a comprehensive collection of poetry, because I prefer to read only a few poems each day. A collection this size takes months to complete with, of course, several fits and restarts. These are especially interesting and compelling because they are both timeless and hopelessly bound to their time. We can hardly imagine the fear and the hope of the War to End All Wars, knowing as we do what came after; or the striving on the last frontier, living as we do long after Earthly frontiers have closed.

But the need for strivings, the inevitable regrets at both success and failure, the heroism of the everyday and the Call of the Wild remain with us still, and will remain as long as we are human. Service uses these feelings shared by humans across time to make lost eras almost understandable.

One hates to be reminded of an everlasting debt.

[Linda M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't read poetry that much, but I've enjoyed Robert Service's poems. I heard about him while reading The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah. My favorite poem is The Cremation of Sam McGee. I can see in my mind the picture that Service is painting.

"And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm—
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm.

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."

[Christopher Manske · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's all the greats from Robert Service, an Englishman who became immersed in the stuff of life while in Canada, France, Mexico, Alaska, and more. His poems inspire laughter and deep thoughts about friendship and fulfillment. An extremely masculine book, Service reminds us of our breadth; that we can spin a fanciful yarn of the yukon and ink a soul-searching treatise on love in Paris. Each of the six books contained in this collection represent a very different perspective geographically and emotionally. Yet underneath, they all beat to the same natural, uncontrived rhythm which makes his poetry so enjoyable to read over and over again.

[Donna Mork · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very long book dense with poems. Some of it was hard to read due to his use of dialect in his dialogue. His poems were often multiple pages and from side to side on the page, very wordy. But a lot of his poetry described life in Alaska, in Paris, and during the war (World War I). Over 700 pages, I didn't think I would finish, but I finally did. A lot of the poems sounded familiar, like I've heard them somewhere before.

[Unathi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like that his words aren't complicated. They have depth without trying to be clever. I think that's sweet and makes the likes of me feel at ease as the kids who loved words, but got a bit lost in poetry class

[Mansor · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an individual who doesn't usually enjoy poetry, this book holds a special place in my heart

[Robin Ferguson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Awesome collection of poems. Some were funny, some were sad but mostly the poems took me to another time and another place

[Desmond Stewart · Rating 5 out of 5]

good

[Milt · Rating 5 out of 5]

collective these of Robert Service move to serve us, who'd be nervous. Reading rhythm with him.

[Barb Ratcliffe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poems from the Yukon were very good.

[C.J. Frederick · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems take up a treasured space on my bookshelf and in my memory. I absolutely adore them.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recently visited the Yukon area of Alaska where I learned about Robert Service so I wanted to read some of his poems. I thoroughly enjoyed this collection!

[Andrew Bell · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://www.andrewroosbell.com/blog/t...

[Claudia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I grew up seeing this volume on my parents' bookshelf and now it is mine. This isn’t the kind of book that I read in a few days--it is 735 pages of poetry after all. I have been working on it for over a year, a few poems at a time. This collection includes six books: The Spell of the Yukon; Ballads of a Cheechako; Rhymes of a Rolling Stone; Rhymes of a Red Cross Man; Ballads of a Bohemian; and Bar-Room Ballads. Service’s best known poems--"The Shooting of Dan Mc Grew" and "The Cremation of Sam Mc Gee"--are included, of course. But my favorites are in Ballads of a Bohemian written just before and during World War I. He discourses briefly on the person or experience in his life that prompted him to write each poem. He also disavows being a poet and claims to just write rhymes. True, his rhymes are simple but they portray honest humor, pathos and spirituality in clear and straightforward language. I am glad to see that this book was reprinted in 1989.