Robert W. Service - The Cremation of Sam McGee

From The Songs of a Sourdough

"The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses"

The Cremation of Sam McGee
by Robert W. Service, 1907

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 Dawson 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 beneath 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 ‘taint 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 ventured 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.


- Robert W. Service (1874-1958)

Maps of Lake LaBarge

Types of Sternwheelers, Paddleboats, and Steamboats

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Introduction to Poem

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Robert W. Service, a Canadian poet and novelist, was known for his ballads of the Yukon. He wrote this narrative poem which is presented here because it is an outstanding example of how sensory stimuli are emphasized and it has a surprise ending.

Robert William Service was born in Preston, England, on January 16, 1874. He emigrated to Canada at the age of twenty, in 1894, and settled for a short time on Vancouver Island. He was employed by the Canadian Bank of Commerce in Victoria, B.C., and was later transferred to Whitehorse and then to Dawson in the Yukon. In all, he spent eight years in the Yukon and saw and experienced the difficult times of the miners, trappers, and hunters that he has presented to us in verse.

During the Balkan War of 1912-13, Service was a war correspondent to the Toronto Star. He served this paper in the same capacity during World War I, also serving two years as an ambulance driver in the Canadian Army medical corps. He returned to Victoria for a time during World War II, but later lived in retirement on the French Riviera, where he died on September 14, 1958, in Monte Carlo.

Sam McGee was a real person, a customer at the Bank of Commerce where Service worked. The Alice May was a real boat, the Olive May, a derelict on Lake Laberge.

Anyone who has experienced the bitterness of cold weather and what it can do to a man will empathize with Sam McGee’s feelings as expressed by Robert Service in this poem.

The Bard of the Yukon, Robert W. Service

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Wikipedia - The Reality Behind the Fiction

More Poems by Robert W. Service - The Poet's Corner

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Discussion of Poem

from Shmoop Website

with verse by verse analysis, themes, quotes,

and study questions

Introduction

Robert W. Service wrote a lot of poems about the Gold Rush that happened in Alaska and northwestern Canada at the turn of the 19th century. "The Cremation of Sam McGee," however, is probably the most famous of all. It was published in 1907 in a collection called Songs of a Sourdough. Service was born in Scotland, but when he wrote the poem, he had been living in the Yukon (in northwestern Canada) for several years. He based "The Cremation of Sam McGee" on the places he saw, the people he met, and the stories he heard while he lived there. Since it’s publication, the poem has been popular with generations of readers, who love its combination of black humor, adventure, and captivating descriptions of the lives of Yukon prospectors.

Why Should I Care?

There are lots of reasons to love "The Cremation of Sam McGee," but we think its mostly worth your time because it is unusual and super fun. It’s got action, horror, excitement, and a killer punch line. Now, here at Shmoop, we like the fancy poems too, but we especially love an author who can make a poem exciting, accessible, and catchy. We bet that once you read this poem a couple times, you’ll find the words and the images getting stuck in your head. In a way, it’s like a great pop song: short, relatable, and fun to hear again and again. There’s no highfalutin’ philosophizing or super-hard language to get in the way of your enjoyment. If you’re looking for a poem that entertains all ages and does it in style, you definitely don’t need to look any farther than this one.

Summary

The poem is about a freezing-cold winter trip in the Yukon, back in the days of the Klondike Gold Rush. The poem’s speaker tells us a story about his friend, Sam McGee, who freezes to death on the trail.

Sam hates the cold and doesn’t want to be buried in the frozen ground. So, as his dying wish, he asks our speaker to cremate him (which is a fancy way of saying "burn his corpse"). The speaker promises he will, but it’s tough to find a way to do it in the dead of winter. He ends up having a lousy trip, carrying Sam’s frozen corpse until he finds a spot to burn Sam’s body.

He starts to burn Sam, but is pretty grossed out by the whole thing. Then, when he goes to see if Sam is "cooked," he finds his friend alive and well and cozy! Apparently Sam just needed to defrost a little, and the raging fire did the trick.

Great Quotes and Opening Lines

“Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words and a book of art.  Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony.”

      Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations




The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray...

      John Greenleaf Whittier, Snowbound




And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

      TS Eliot, Little Gidding




Hold to the Now,
The Here, to
Which all Future plunges
To the Past.

      James Joyce, Ulysses

Percy Bysshe Shelley - To A Skylark

Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
     Bird thou never wert,
          That from heaven, or near it
     Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strain of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
     From the earth thou springest
          Like a cloud of fire;
     The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning
     Of the sunken sun,
          O'er which clouds are brightning,
    Thou dost float and run;
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even
     Melts around thy flight;
          Like a star of heaven,
     In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

Keen as are the arrows
     Of that silver sphere,
          Whose intense lamp narrows
     In the white dawn clear,
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air
     With thy voice is loud,
          As, when night is bare,
     From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflow'd.

What thou art we know not:,
     What is most like thee?
     From rainbow clouds there flow not
          Drops so bright to see,
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden,
     In the light of thought,
          Singing hymns unbidden,
     Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not;

Like a high-born maiden
     In a palace-tower,
          Soothing her love-laden
     Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower;

Like a glow-worm golden
     In a dell of dew,
          Scattering unbeholden
     Its aerial hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view;

Like a rose embower'd
     In its own green leaves,
          By warm winds deflower'd,
     Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves:

Sound of vernal showers
     On the twinkling grass,
          Rain-awaken'd flowers,
     All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,
     What sweet thoughts are thine;
          I have never heard
     Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine;

Chorus hymeneal,
     Or triumphal chaunt,
          Match'd with thine would be all
     But an empty vaunt -
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains
     Of thy happy strain?
          What fields, or waves, or mountains?
     What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance
     Languor cannot be -
          Shadow of annoyance
     Never came near thee:
Thou lovest - but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,
     Thou of death must deem
          Things more true and deep
     Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,
     And pine for what is not;
          Our sincerest laughter
     With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn
     Hate, and pride, and fear;
          If we were things born
     Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures
     Of delightful sound -
          Better than all treasures
     That in books are found -
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness
     That thy brain must know,
          Such harmonious madness
     From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening  now!

Percy Bysshe Shelley (June, 1820)



 

William Butler Yeats - Brown Penny

I WHISPERED, 'I am too young.'

And then, 'I am old enough';

Wherefore I threw a penny

To find out if I might love.

'Go and love, go and love, young man,

If the lady be young and fair.'

Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,

I am looped in the loops of her hair.

O love is the crooked thing,

There is nobody wise enough

To find out all that is in it,

For he would be thinking of love

Till the stars had run away

And the shadows eaten the moon.

Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,

One cannot begin it too soon.


William Butler Yeats, 1910



Biographical References

Biography -  by Poemhunter

Biography - by Wikipedia



Analyses of Poem


FIRST ANALYSIS

by DC Aries

http://www.humanities360.com/index.php/poetry-analysis-brown-penny-by-william-butler-yeats-2-11904/

 

William Butler Yeats was a writer of Irish and British descent. He was born in Ireland in 1865. He went on to become an accomplished poet and won the Nobel Prize for poetry. The poem, “Brown Penny“  was published in 1910 and appeared in a volume of poetry entitled, The Green Helmet and Other Poems. The theme of Brown Penny focused on romantic relationships and what it really means to fall in love. The poem opens with the lines,

 

I whispered, ‘I am too young,’

And then, ‘I am old enough’;

Wherefore I threw a penny

To find out if I might love.

 

Yeats writes about a young man who is questioning whether or not he is at an age where he can truly appreciate and experience love. He has conflicting feelings about it so he throws a penny in hopes of finding an answer. The remaining lines of the stanza include the answer.

 

‘Go and love, go and love, young man,

If the lady be young and fair.’

Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,

I am looped in the loops of her hair.

 

The answer the young may gets its that if she is the right woman, he will find love with her. The answer disregards age and explains that when its with the right person, anyone can love. The man then professes his love by stating, “I am looped in the loops of her hair.” 

 

In the second half of the poem Yeats writes,

 

O love is the crooked thing,

There is nobody wise enough

To find out all that is in it,

For he would be thinking of love

Till the stars had run away

And the shadows eaten the moon.

Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,

One cannot begin it too soon.

 

In this stanza, the man continues his conversation with the penny and comes to the realization that nobody can ever truly understand love or “all that is in it.” There is too much to explore and to know everything there is to know about love a man would have to think “Till the stars had run away/And the shadows eaten the moon.” Therefore, he concludes that no one is too young or too old to love because it takes more than a lifetime to understand.

 

A poetry element Yeats really works with in this poem is diction. His word choice is creative and unique. This is a conflict within himself, but he uses “brown penny,” as someone to converse with.  The choice of using a penny is appropriate. By flipping the penny, he is taking a chance. There is also a fair amount of repetition. “brown penny” is repeated over and over and adds to the flow of the poem. “Go and love,” is also repeated several times, to show that it is an important line. “Looped in the loops of her hair,” is a great line that uses the word “loop” as two different meanings. Looped means entangled in this woman and also describes strands of her hair. Loop can also refer to the uncertainty in love. This is another way of expressing his affection for the woman. He shows more creativity in the second stanza with the lines, “Till the stars had run away/And the shadows eaten the moon.” This is an unusual phrase that most readers won’t have heard before, but still, in the context of the poem, the readers will understand what Yeats is saying.

 

The major symbol in this poem is the “brown penny.” To find out whether or not he is in love, the man  flips a penny. He takes a chance. This is what love is all about. Individuals take a chance when they commit or fall in love with someone. They don’t know how its going to end and they risk their heart and their lives for the sake of love. As with flipping a penny, the young man doesn’t know how it will land or what the future holds. But he risks it for love.

 

“Brown Penny” was an unique, yet honest poem by Yeats. Unlike many love poems throughout history, it wasn’t boring or generic. It used the right amount of diction, repetition and symbolism to capture the meaning. Yeats showed the emotion of young love in an effective way. “Brown Penny” was an incredible poem by a talented man.

 

 

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SECOND ANALYSIS

by Raina Lorring

http://www.humanities360.com/index.php/poetry-analysis-brown-penny-by-william-butler-yeats-11802/

 

Poetry is meant to be heard. Readers can not get the full effect of many works if they simple read the piece to themselves. This is why many poetry lovers find it helpful to read the works out loud and poetry readings are still popular. The poem “Brown Penny” by William Butler Yeats is meant to heard and read. The poet was born in Dublin in 1865. He stood out among other poets of his period, who used a free verse style,  because he wrote lyrical poetry. “Brown Penny” is more of a love song than a poem.

 

The “penny” is an important symbol in the poem. In the culture in which Yeats grew up, the “penny” is a symbol for love for commoners. The reason for this is because love is something that is priceless. A common tradition of the period was to have a “Penny Wedding”, where guest were expected to bring their own food.

 

Yeats also uses the “penny” to show that he is taking a chance on love. This is apparent since a “penny” is currency and invokes the image of gambling. This can be seen in the line, “Wherefore I threw a penny.” This line can also be symbol for wishing for love because the act of trowing a “penny” down a well has been a long standing tradition of making a wish.

 

The style of the poem is almost a whirling dance with words. Yeats skillfully wrote a poem that comes to life when the audience hears the piece as it was meant to be heard, in song. The speaker in the poem is “looped” in his lovers hair. This word gives the image of the dance and also shows how the speaker is bound to his lover.

 

Yeats shows how much lovers can clash with the lines: “O love is the crooked thing, / There is nobody wise enough / To find out all that is in it.” Love is a struggle of give and take.

 

“Brown Penny” also shows how as difficult love can be, it is not something that can ever be escaped. Yeats says that the speaker “would be thinking of love / Till the stars had run away / And the shadows eaten the moon.” These lines mean that love is not only a struggle but an eternal one.

 

Love is a dance and poem is meant to be heard. The skillful words of “Brown Penny” need a voice to give them life. Yeats understood this and captures the conflicting emotions of love in his poem “Brown Penny.”

 

 

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THIRD ANALYSIS

by Milton Johanides

http://www.humanities360.com/index.php/what-is-the-meaning-of-yeats-poem-brown-penny-8884/

 

Brown Penny by W B Yeats is a short poem written in 1910 and deals in a lighthearted way with the serious business of a young man considering falling in love. The young man, perhaps Yeats himself, tosses a coin, the brown penny, to see if he is old enough to love. In an age wrought with superstitions such an action may not have sounded as amusing as it does today. Victorian Britain was a society which took seriously the behavior of ordinary objects, hence all the wedding traditions we are still familiar with, such as dressing in white, wearing a veil, having something borrowed, something blue, etc. The Victorians even had a theory about the type of marriage a couple would enjoy depending on the colour of the bride´s dress, the day of the wedding and even the state of the weather. So Yeats is, perhaps tongue in cheek, borrowing from this culture to determine his own fate.

 

The coin encourages him to “go and love” especially if the lady “be young and fair.” The last line of the first verse “looped in the loops of the hair” suggests the looping of the coin as it travels through the air as well as drawing on an image favoured by Yeats of being draped in the hair of his loved one, as in “He Bids His Beloved Be At Peace” (line 10: and your hair fall over my breast).

 

In contrast to the lightheartedness of the first verse, the second introduces a feeling of frustration at the immense power of love and its ability to deceive. “Love is the crooked thing” he says, in other words something that twists and turns, not in lovely loops like a girl´s long hair, but in an unpredictable way that can confuse. “Crooked” of course also implies dishonesty, even illegal activity, so love is very much on the wrong side of the tracks in this verse. Yeats has made it an enemy, testing his wisdom.  “There is nobody wise enough to find all that is in it,” is a despairing line, commenting on the immensity of the task facing a young man encountering romance for the first time. Today, love is perhaps a more transient thing, experienced easily and quickly abandoned if it fails, but in Yeats´ time, when propriety mattered and behaviour was governed by religious beliefs, individuals had to think very carefully before entering a relationship, taking into careful consideration not only the possible uncomfortable results of difficult romance, but also what other people thought. Falling in love promised a minefield of adverse social consequences.

 

But it is not the social environment that concerns Yeats here, it is the enigmatic quality of love that baffles him. The world would end, he says, before anyone, no matter how wise, could understand it. Using the stars and the moon in this context is deliberately invoking the imagery of the romantic poets of an earlier century, but giving it a more morbid twist.

 

Still, far from putting off the young man, the size of the task before him only encourages him further. “One cannot begin it too soon” brings the poem back to its lighthearted beginning and leaves the reader with a wry smile. This is the fate of all mankind, that no matter how insurmountable the odds of finding true love are, we each of us attempt it, time and time again. Given the unfathomable nature of the exercise, tossing a brown penny has as much chance of bringing us success as anything else.


 

Robert Louis Stevenson - Requiem

Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894

Robert with his mother at a young age

Robert as a young author at the age of 26

Under the wide and starry sky

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse ye grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be,

  Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

Robert Louis Stevenson (c.1850-1894), was a Scottish novelist, poet, and essayist, best known for his adventure stories like Treasure Island. Stevenson was a sickly man (he died of tuberculosis) who nevertheless led an adventurous life. He spent his last five years on the island of Samoa as a planter and chief of the natives.

At the time of penning his own epitaph, Requiem (1879) Stevenson was ill, distraught and close to death. Recovering, he lived another 15 years before passing away in his beloved Samoa. And it is this same poem that can now be found engraved upon his tombstone.

Robert Louis Stevenson - Autumn Fires

Autumn Fires

 by Robert Louis Stevenson

(1850-1894)

In the other gardens

And all up the vale,

From the autumn bonfires

See the smoke trail!

Pleasant summer over

And all the summer flowers,

The red fire blazes,

The grey smoke towers.

Sing a song of seasons!

Something bright in all!

Flowers in the summer,

Fires in the fall!