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To the Man of the High North

My rhymes are rough, and often in my rhyming

I’ve drifted, silver sailed, on seas of dream,

Hearing afar the bells of Elfland chiming,

Seeing the groves of Arcadie agleam.

I was the thrall of Beauty that rejoices

From the peak snow-diademed to regal star;

Yet to mine aerie ever pierced the voices,

The pregnant voices of the Things That Are.

The Here, the Now, the vast Forlorn around us;

The gold-delirium, the ferine strife;

The lusts that lure us on, the hates that hound us;

Our red rags in the patchwork quilt of Life.

The nameless men who nameless rivers travel,

And in strange valleys greet strange deaths alone;

The grim, intrepid ones who would unravel

The mysteries that shroud the Polar Zone.

These will I sing, and if one of you linger

Over my pages in the Long, Long Night,

And on some lone line lay a calloused finger,

Saying: “It’s human-true — it hits me right”;

Then will I count this loving toil well spent;

Then will I dream awhile — content, content.

The Ballad of the Black Fox Skin

I

There was Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike living the life of shame,

When unto them in the Long, Long Night came the man-who-had-no-name;

Bearing his prize of a black fox pelt, out of the Wild he came.

His cheeks were blanched as the flume-head foam when the brown spring freshets flow;

Deep in their dark, sin-calcined pits were his sombre eyes aglow;

They knew him far for the fitful man who spat forth blood on the snow.

“Did ever you see such a skin?” quoth he; “there’s nought in the world so fine —

Such fullness of fur as black as the night, such lustre, such size, such shine;

It’s life to a one-lunged man like me; it’s London, it’s women, it’s wine.

“The Moose-hides called it the devil-fox, and swore that no man could kill;

That he who hunted it, soon or late, must surely suffer some ill;

But I laughed at them and their old squaw-tales. Ha! Ha! I’m laughing still.

“For look ye, the skin — it’s as smooth as sin, and black as the core of the Pit.

By gun or by trap, whatever the hap, I swore I would capture it;

By star and by star afield and afar, I hunted and would not quit.

“For the devil-fox, it was swift and sly, and it seemed to fleer at me;

I would wake in fright by the campfire light hearing its evil glee;

Into my dream its eyes would gleam, and its shadow would I see.

“It sniffed and ran from the ptarmigan I had poisoned to excess;

Unharmed it sped from my wrathful lead (’twas as if I shot by guess);

Yet it came by night in the stark moonlight to mock at my weariness.

“I tracked it up where the mountains hunch like the vertebrae of the world;

I tracked it down to the death-still pits where the avalanche is hurled;

From the glooms to the sacerdotal snows, where the carded clouds are curled.

“From the vastitudes where the world protrudes through clouds like seas up-shoaled,

I held its track till it led me back to the land I had left of old —

The land I had looted many moons. I was weary and sick and cold.

“I was sick, soul-sick, of the futile chase, and there and then I swore

The foul fiend fox might scathless go, for I would hunt no more;

Then I rubbed mine eyes in a vast surprise — it stood by my cabin door.

“A rifle raised in the wraith-like gloom, and a vengeful shot that sped;

A howl that would thrill a cream-faced corpse — and the demon fox lay dead.…

Yet there was never a sign of wound, and never a drop he bled.

“So that was the end of the great black fox, and here is the prize I’ve won;

And now for a drink to cheer me up — I’ve mushed since the early sun;

We’ll drink a toast to the sorry ghost of the fox whose race is run.”

II

Now Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike, bad as the worst were they;

In their roadhouse down by the river trail they waited and watched for prey;

With wine and song they joyed night long, and they slept like swine by day.

For things were done in the Midnight Sun that no tongue will ever tell;

And men there be who walk earth-free, but whose names are writ in hell —

Are writ in flames with the guilty names of Fournier and Labelle.

Put not your trust in a poke of dust would ye sleep the sleep of sin;

For there be those who would rob your clothes ere yet the dawn comes in;

And a prize likewise in a woman’s eyes is a peerless black fox skin.

Put your faith in the mountain cat if you lie within his lair,

Trust the fangs of the mother wolf, and the claws of the lead-ripped bear;

But oh, of the wiles and the gold-tooth smiles of a dance-hall wench beware!

Wherefore it was beyond all laws that lusts of man restrain,

A man drank deep and sank to sleep never to wake again;

And the Yukon swallowed through a hole in the cold corpse of the slain.

III

The black fox skin a shadow cast from the roof nigh to the floor;

And sleek it seemed and soft it gleamed, and the woman stroked it o’er;

And the man stood by with a brooding eye, and gnashed his teeth and swore.

When thieves and thugs fall out and fight there’s fell arrears to pay;

And soon or late sin meets its fate, and so it fell one day

That Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike fanged up like dogs at bay.

“The skin is mine, all mine,” she cried; “I did the deed alone.”

“It’s share and share with a guilt-yoke pair,” he hissed in a pregnant tone;

And so they snarled like malamutes over a mildewed bone.

And so they fought, by fear untaught, till haply it befell

One dawn of day she slipped away to Dawson town to sell

The fruit of sin, this black fox skin that had made their lives a hell.

She slipped away as still he lay, she clutched the wondrous fur;

Her pulses beat, her foot was fleet, her fear was as a spur;

She laughed with glee, she did not see him rise and follow her.

The bluffs uprear and grimly peer far over Dawson town;

They see its lights a blaze o’ nights and harshly they look down;

They mock the plan and plot of man with grim, ironic frown.

The trail was steep; ’twas at the time when swiftly sinks the snow;

All honeycombed, the river ice was rotting down below;

The river chafed beneath its rind with many a mighty throe.

And up the swift and oozy drift a woman climbed in fear,

Clutching to her black fox fur as if she held it dear;

And hard she pressed it to her breast — then Windy Ike drew near.

She made no moan — her heart was stone — she read his smiling face,

And like a dream flashed all her life’s dark horror and disgrace;

A moment only — with a snarl he hurled her into space.

She rolled for nigh an hundred feet; she bounded like a ball;

From crag to crag she caromed down through snow and timber fall; …

A hole gaped in the river ice; the spray flashed — that was all.

A bird sang for the joy of spring, so piercing sweet and frail;

And blinding bright the land was dight in gay and glittering mail;

And with a wondrous black fox skin a man slid down the trail.

IV

A wedge-faced man there was who ran along the river bank,

Who stumbled through each drift and slough, and ever slipped and sank,

And ever cursed his Maker’s name, and ever “hooch” he drank.

He travelled like a hunted thing, hard harried, sore distrest;

The old grandmother moon crept out from her cloud-quilted nest;

The aged mountains mocked at him in their primeval rest.

Grim shadows diapered the snow; the air was strangely mild;

The valley’s girth was dumb with mirth, the laughter of the wild;

The still sardonic laughter of an ogre o’er a child.

The river writhed beneath the ice; it groaned like one in pain,

The yawning chasms opened wide, and closed and yawned again;

And sheets of silver heaved on high until they split in twain.

From out the road-house by the trail they saw a man afar

Make for the narrow river-reach where the swift cross-currents are;

Where, frail and worn, the ice is torn and angry waters jar.

But they did not see him crash and sink into the icy flow;

They did not see him clinging there, gripped by the undertow,

Clawing with bleeding fingernails at the jagged ice and snow.

They found a note beside the hole where he had stumbled in:

“Here met his fate by evil luck a man who lived in sin,

And to the one who loves me least I leave this black fox skin.”

And strange it is; for, though they searched the river all around,

No trace or sign of black fox skin was ever after found;

Though one man said he saw the tread of hoofs deep in the ground.

The Ballad of One-Eyed Mike

This is the tale that was told to me by the man with the crystal eye,

As I smoked my pipe in the campfire light, and the Glories swept the sky;

As the Northlights gleamed and curved and streamed, and the bottle of “hooch” was dry.

A man once aimed that my life be shamed, and wrought me a deathly wrong;

I vowed one day I would well repay, but the heft of his hate was strong.

He thonged me East and he thonged me West; he harried me back and forth,

Till I fled in fright from his peerless spite to the bleak, bald-headed North.

And there I lay, and for many a day I hatched plan after plan,

For a golden haul of the wherewithal to crush and to kill my man;

And there I strove, and there I clove through the drift of icy streams;

And there I fought, and there I sought for the pay-streak of my dreams.

So twenty years, with their hopes and fears and smiles and tears and such,

Went by and left me long bereft of hope of the Midas touch;

About as fat as a chancel rat, and lo! despite my will,

In the weary fight I had clean lost sight of the man I sought to kill.

’Twas so far away, that evil day when I prayed the Prince of Gloom

For the savage strength and the sullen length of life to work his doom.

Nor sign nor word had I seen or heard, and it happed so long ago;

My youth was gone and my memory wan, and I willed it even so.

It fell one night in the waning light by the Yukon’s oily flow,

I smoked and sat as I marvelled at the sky’s port-winey glow;

Till it paled away to an absinthe grey, and the river seemed to shrink,

All wobbly flakes and wriggling snakes and goblin eyes a-wink.

’Twas weird to see and it ’wildered me in a queer, hypnotic dream,

Till I saw a spot like an inky blot come floating down the stream;

It bobbed and swung; it sheered and hung; it romped round in a ring;

It seemed to play in a tricksome way; it sure was a merry thing.

In freakish flights strange oily lights came fluttering round its head,

Like butterflies of a monster size — then I knew it for the Dead.

Its face was rubbed and slicked and scrubbed as smooth as a shaven pate;

In the silver snakes that the water makes it gleamed like a dinner plate.

It gurgled near, and clear and clear and large and large it grew;

It stood upright in a ring of light and it looked me through and through.

It weltered round with a woozy sound, and ere I could retreat,

With the witless roll of a sodden soul it wantoned to my feet.

And here I swear by this Cross I wear, I heard that “floater” say:

“I am the man from whom you ran, the man you sought to slay.

That you may note and gaze and gloat, and say ‘Revenge is sweet,’

In the grit and grime of the river’s slime I am rotting at your feet.

“The ill we rue must e’en undo, though it rive us bone from bone;

So it came about that I sought you out, for I prayed I might atone.

I did you wrong and for long and long I sought where you might live;

And now you’re found, though I’m dead and drowned, I beg you to forgive.”

So sad it seemed, and its cheekbones gleamed, and its fingers flicked the shore;

And it lapped and lay in a weary way, and its hands met to implore;

That I gently said: “Poor, restless dead, I would never work you woe;

Though the wrong you rue you can ne’er undo, I forgave you long ago.”

Then, wonder-wise, I rubbed my eyes and I woke from a horrid dream.

The moon rode high in the naked sky, and something bobbed in the stream.

It held my sight in a patch of light, and then it sheered from the shore;

It dipped and sank by a hollow bank, and I never saw it more.

This was the tale he told to me, that man so warped and grey,

Ere he slept and dreamed, and the campfire gleamed in his eye in a wolfish way —

That crystal eye that raked the sky in the weird Auroral ray.

The Man from Eldorado

I

He’s the man from Eldorado, and he’s just arrived in town,

In the moccasins and oily buckskin shirt.

He’s gaunt as any Indian, and pretty nigh as brown;

He’s greasy, and he smells of sweat and dirt.

He sports a crop of whiskers that would shame a healthy hog;

Hard work has racked his joints and stooped his back;

He slops along the sidewalk followed by his yellow dog,

But he’s got a bunch of gold-dust in his sack.

He seems a little wistful as he blinks at all the lights,

And maybe he is thinking of his claim

And the dark and dwarfish cabin where he lay and dreamed at nights,

(Thank God, he’ll never see the place again!)

Where he lived on tinned tomatoes, beef embalmed and sourdough bread,

On rusty beans and bacon furred with mould;

His stomach’s out of kilter and his system full of lead,

But it’s over, and his poke is full of gold.

He has panted at the windlass, he has loaded in the drift,

He has pounded at the face of oozy clay;

He has taxed himself to sickness, dark and damp and double shift,

He has laboured like a demon night and day.

And now, praise God, it’s over, and he seems to breathe again

Of new-mown hay, the warm, wet, friendly loam;

He sees a snowy orchard in a green and dimpling plain,

And a little vine-clad cottage, and it’s — Home.

II

He’s the man from Eldorado, and he’s had a bite and sup,

And he’s met in with a drouthy friend or two;

He’s cached away his gold-dust, but he’s sort of bucking up,

So he’s kept enough tonight to see him through.

His eye is bright and genial, his tongue no longer lags;

His heart is brimming o’er with joy and mirth;

He may be far from savoury, he may be clad in rags,

But tonight he feels as if he owns the earth.

Says he: “Boys, here is where the shaggy North and I will shake;

I thought I’d never manage to get free.

I kept on making misses; but at least I’ve got my stake;

There’s no more thawing frozen muck for me.

I am going to God’s Country, where I’ll live the simple life;

I’ll buy a bit of land and make a start;

I’ll carve a little homestead, and I’ll win a little wife,

And raise ten little kids to cheer my heart.”

They signified their sympathy by crowding to the bar;

They bellied up three deep and drank his health.

He shed a radiant smile around and smoked a rank cigar;

They wished him honour, happiness and wealth.

They drank unto his wife to be — that unsuspecting maid;

They drank unto his children half a score;

And when they got through drinking very tenderly they laid

The man from Eldorado on the floor.

III

He’s the man from Eldorado, and he’s only starting in

To cultivate a thousand-dollar jag.

His poke is full of gold-dust and his heart is full of sin,

And he’s dancing with a girl called Muckluck Mag.

She’s as light as any fairy; she’s as pretty as a peach;

She’s mistress of the witchcraft to beguile;

There’s sunshine in her manner, there is music in her speech,

And there’s concentrated honey in her smile.

Oh, the fever of the dance-hall and the glitter and the shine,

The beauty, and the jewels, and the whirl,

The madness of the music, the rapture of the wine,

The languorous allurement of a girl!

She is like a lost madonna; he is gaunt, unkempt and grim;

But she fondles him and gazes in his eyes;

Her kisses seek his heavy lips, and soon it seems to him

He has staked a little claim in Paradise.

“Who’s for a juicy two-step?” cries the master of the floor;

The music throbs with soft, seductive beat.

There’s glitter, gilt and gladness; there are pretty girls galore;

There’s a woolly man with moccasins on feet.

They know they’ve got him going; he is buying wine for all,

They crowd around as buzzards at a feast,

Then when his poke is empty they boost him from the hall,

And spurn him in the gutter like a beast.

He’s the man from Eldorado, and he’s painting red the town;

Behind he leaves a trail of yellow dust;

In a whirl of senseless riot he is ramping up and down;

There’s nothing checks his madness and his lust.

And soon the word is passed around — it travels like a flame;

They fight to clutch his hand and call him friend,

The chevaliers of lost repute, the dames of sorry fame;

Then comes the grim awakening — the end.

IV

He’s the man from Eldorado, and he gives a grand affair;

There’s feasting, dancing, wine without restraint.

The smooth Beau Brummels of the bar, the faro men, are there;

The tinhorns and purveyors of red paint;

The sleek and painted women, their predacious eyes aglow —

Sure Klondike City never saw the like;

Then Muckluck Mag proposed the toast, “The giver of the show,

The livest sport that ever hit the pike.”

The “live one” rises to his feet; he stammers to reply —

And then there comes before his muddled brain

A vision of green vastitudes beneath an April sky,

And clover pastures drenched with silver rain.

He knows that it can never be, that he is down and out;

Life leers at him with foul and fetid breath;

And then amid the revelry, the song and cheer and shout,

He suddenly grows grim and cold as death.

He grips the table tensely, and he says: “Dear friends of mine,

I’ve let you dip your fingers in my purse;

I’ve crammed you at my table, and I’ve drowned you in my wine,

And I’ve little left to give you but — my curse.

I’ve failed supremely in my plans; it’s rather late to whine;

My poke is mighty wizened up and small.

I thank you each for coming here; the happiness is mine —

And now, you thieves and harlots, take it all.”

He twists the thong from off his poke; he swings it o’er his head;

The nuggets fall around their feet like grain.

They rattle over roof and wall; they scatter, roll and spread;

The dust is like a shower of golden rain.

The guests a moment stand aghast, then grovel on the floor;

They fight, and snarl, and claw, like beasts of prey;

And then, as everybody grabbed and everybody swore,

The man from Eldorado slipped away.

V

He’s the man from Eldorado, and they found him stiff and dead,

Half covered by the freezing ooze and dirt.

A clotted Colt was in his hand, a hole was in his head,

And he wore an old and oily buckskin shirt.

His eyes were fixed and horrible, as one who hails the end;

The frost had set him rigid as a log;

And there, half lying on his breast, his last and only friend,

There crouched and whined a mangy yellow dog.

The Wood-Cutter

The sky is like an envelope,

One of those blue official things;

And, sealing it, to mock our hope,

The moon, a silver wafer, clings.

What shall we find when death gives leave

To read — our sentence or reprieve?

I’m holding it down on God’s scrap-pile, up on the fag-end of earth;

O’er me a menace of mountains, a river that grits at my feet;

Face to face with my soul-self, weighing my life at its worth;

Wondering what I was made for, here in my last retreat.

Last! Ah, yes, it’s the finish. Have ever you heard a man cry?

(Sobs that rake him and rend him, right from the base of the chest.)

That’s how I’ve cried, oh, so often; and now that my tears are dry,

I sit in the desolate quiet and wait for the infinite Rest.

Rest! Well, it’s restful around me; it’s quiet clean to the core

The mountains pose in their ermine, in golden the hills are clad;

The big, blue, silt-freighted Yukon seethes by my cabin door,

And I think it’s only the river that keeps me from going mad.

By day it’s a ruthless monster, a callous, insatiate thing,

With oily bubble and eddy, with sudden swirling of breast;

By night it’s a writhing Titan, sullenly murmuring,

Ever and ever goaded, and ever crying for rest.

It cries for its human tribute, but me it will never drown.

I’ve learned the lore of my river; my river obeys me well.

I hew and launch my cordwood, and raft it to Dawson town,

Where wood means wine and women, and, incidentally, hell.

Hell and the anguish thereafter. Here as I sit alone

I’d give the life I have left me to lighten some load of care:

(The bitterest part of the bitter is being denied to atone;

Lips that have mocked at Heaven lend themselves ill to prayer.)

Impotent as a beetle-pierced on the needle of Fate;

A wretch in a cosmic death-cell, peaks for my prison bars;

’Whelmed by a world stupendous, lonely and listless I wait,

Drowned in a sea of silence, strewn with confetti of stars.

See! from far up the valley a rapier pierces the night,

The white search-ray of a steamer. Swiftly, serenely it nears;

A proud, white, alien presence, a glittering galley of light,

Confident-poised, triumphant, freighted with hopes and fears.

I look as one looks on a vision; I see it pulsating by;

I glimpse joy-radiant faces; I hear the thresh of the wheel.

Hoof-like my heart beats a moment; then silence swoops from the sky.

Darkness is piled upon darkness. God only knows how I feel.

Maybe you’ve seen me sometimes; maybe you’ve pitied me then —

The lonely waif of the wood-camp, here by my cabin door.

Some day you’ll look and see not; futile and outcast of men,

I shall be far from your pity, resting forevermore.

My life was a problem in ciphers, a wear and profitless sum.

Slipshod and stupid I worked it, dazed by negation and doubt.

Ciphers the total confronts me. Oh, Death, with thy moistened thumb,

Stoop like a petulant schoolboy, wipe me forever out!