POETRY SPOT

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Robert W. Service Bust and Plaque in Whitehorse

The plaque reads:

Robert W Service is to Alaska, Canada and the US what Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson are to Australia.

Robert Service became well-known in Canada during the early twentieth century for his poetry that encompassed that world, as well as for poetry that could convey compelling stories in ways that typical short stories simply couldn’t. ‘The Spell of the Yukon’ is one of Service’s early works, one of the things that, early on in his literary career, distinguished him greatly and made people take note of his name and skill.

In 1904 while working for a Canadian bank, Robert Service was transferred to Whitehorse, a small town in the Yukon, a northern Canadian Province bordering Alaska known for its extreme cold. During the Yukon Gold Rush of 1896-1899 the town had served as a campground for some of the more than 100,000 prospectors who flooded the Yukon searching for gold. Service took part in the town's social life including reciting poetry. Eventually he started composing his own poems, many of which were narrative poems about the great gold rush. "The Spell Of The Yukon" was published in Service's first book of poetry, "Songs of a Sourdough" in 1907.

The message of the poem is summed up by 2 lines from near the end

Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting

So much as just finding the gold.

A friend of mine – Big Jim – who was killed in a plane crash, had a saying in a similar vein. Jim was a property developer who sought out deals and worked on them to put them together. His passion was putting the deal together, not the final finished development, his phrase being “The thrill is in the hunt.”

For Jim, the journey was more important than the destination.

For Service it was not the gold but the beauty, majesty and grandness of the land, which many did not see, they saw only the hard times, adversity and extremes of difficulty.

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Here is Robert W Service’s poem:

The Spell of the Yukon

I wanted the gold, and I sought it;

I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.

Was it famine or scurvy—I fought it;

I hurled my youth into a grave.

I wanted the gold, and I got it— 

Came 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 it

To 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 earth—and 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 hollow

That’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.

The summer—no sweeter was ever;

The sunshiny woods all athrill;

The grayling aleap in the river,

The bighorn asleep on the hill.

The strong life that never knows harness;

The wilds where the caribou call;

The freshness, the freedom, the farness—

O God! how I’m stuck on it all.

The winter! the brightness that blinds you,

The white land locked tight as a drum,

The cold fear that follows and finds you,

The silence that bludgeons you dumb.

The snows that are older than history,

The woods where the weird shadows slant;

The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery,

I’ve bade ’em good-by—but I can’t.

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 just hang by a hair;

There are hardships that nobody reckons;

There are valleys unpeopled and still;

There’s a land—oh, it beckons and beckons,

And I want to go back—and I will.

They’re making my money diminish;

I’m sick of the taste of champagne.

Thank God! when I’m skinned to a finish

I’ll pike to the Yukon again.

I’ll fight—and you bet it’s no sham-fight;

It’s hell!—but I’ve been there before;

And it’s better than this by a damsite—

So me for the Yukon once more.

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.

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Some pics:

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If you haven't seen the Robert Redford film Jeremiah Johnson, make a point of doing so. One of the characters, Del Gue, tells Jeremiah why he chose the life of a mountain man . . .

Ain't this somethin'? I told my pap and mam I was going to be a mountain man; acted like they was gut-shot. "Make your life go here, son. Here's where the people is. Them mountains is for Indians and wild men." "Mother Gue", I says "the Rocky Mountains is the marrow of the world," and by God, I was right. Keep your nose in the wind and your eye along the skyline.

I ain't never seen 'em, but my common sense tells me the Andes is foothills, and the Alps is for children to climb! Keep good care of your hair! These here is God's finest scupturings! And there ain't no laws for the brave ones! And there ain't no asylums for the crazy ones! And there ain't no churches, except for this right here! And there ain't no priests excepting the birds. By God, I are a mountain man, and I'll live 'til an arrow or a bullet finds me. And then I'll leave my bones on this great map of the magnificent...