Ballads of a Cheechako Part 1

Ballads of a Cheechako.

by Robert W. Service.

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 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 l.u.s.ts that lure us on, the hates that hound us; Our red rags in the patch-work 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.

Men of the High North

Men of the High North, the wild sky is blazing; Islands of opal float on silver seas; Swift splendors kindle, barbaric, amazing; Pale ports of amber, golden argosies.

Ringed all around us the proud peaks are glowing; Fierce chiefs in council, their wigwam the sky; Far, far below us the big Yukon flowing, Like threaded quicksilver, gleams to the eye.

Men of the High North, you who have known it; You in whose hearts its splendors have abode; Can you renounce it, can you disown it?

Can you forget it, its glory and its goad?

Where is the hards.h.i.+p, where is the pain of it?

Lost in the limbo of things you've forgot; Only remain the guerdon and gain of it; Zest of the foray, and G.o.d, how you fought!

You who have made good, you foreign faring; You money magic to far lands has whirled; Can you forget those days of vast daring, There with your soul on the Top o' the World?

Nights when no peril could keep you awake on Spruce boughs you spread for your couch in the snow; Taste all your feasts like the beans and the bacon Fried at the camp-fire at forty below?

Can you remember your huskies all going, Barking with joy and their brushes in air; You in your parka, glad-eyed and glowing, Monarch, your subjects the wolf and the bear?

Monarch, your kingdom unravisht and gleaming; Mountains your throne, and a river your car; Crash of a bull moose to rouse you from dreaming; Forest your couch, and your candle a star.

You who this faint day the High North is luring Unto her vastness, taintlessly sweet; You who are steel-braced, straight-lipped, enduring, Dreadless in danger and dire in defeat: Honor the High North ever and ever, Whether she crown you, or whether she slay; Suffer her fury, cherish and love her-- He who would rule he must learn to obey.

Men of the High North, fierce mountains love you; Proud rivers leap when you ride on their breast.

See, the austere sky, pensive above you, Dons all her jewels to smile on your rest.

Children of Freedom, scornful of frontiers, We who are weaklings honor your worth.

Lords of the wilderness, Princes of Pioneers, Let's have a rouse that will ring round the earth.

The Ballad of the Northern Lights

One of the Down and Out--that's me. Stare at me well, ay, stare!

Stare and shrink--say! you wouldn't think that I was a millionaire.

Look at my face, it's crimped and gouged--one of them death-mask things; Don't seem the sort of man, do I, as might be the pal of kings?

Slouching along in smelly rags, a bleary-eyed, no-good b.u.m; A knight of the hollow needle, pard, spewed from the sodden slum.

Look me all over from head to foot; how much would you think I was worth?

A dollar? a dime? a nickel? Why, I'M THE WEALTHIEST MAN ON EARTH.

No, don't you think that I'm off my base. You'll sing a different tune If only you'll let me spin my yarn. Come over to this saloon; Wet my throat--it's as dry as chalk, and seeing as how it's you, I'll tell the tale of a Northern trail, and so help me G.o.d, it's true.

I'll tell of the howling wilderness and the haggard Arctic heights, Of a reckless vow that I made, and how I STAKED THE NORTHERN LIGHTS.

Remember the year of the Big Stampede and the trail of Ninety-eight, When the eyes of the world were turned to the North, and the hearts of men elate; Hearts of the old dare-devil breed thrilled at the wondrous strike, And to every man who could hold a pan came the message, "Up and hike".

Well, I was there with the best of them, and I knew I would not fail.

You wouldn't believe it to see me now; but wait till you've heard my tale.

You've read of the trail of Ninety-eight, but its woe no man may tell; It was all of a piece and a whole yard wide, and the name of the brand was "h.e.l.l".

We heard the call and we staked our all; we were plungers playing blind, And no man cared how his neighbor fared, and no man looked behind; For a ruthless greed was born of need, and the weakling went to the wall, And a curse might avail where a prayer would fail, and the gold l.u.s.t crazed us all.

Bold were we, and they called us three the "Unholy Trinity"; There was Ole Olson, the sailor Swede, and the Dago Kid and me.

We were the discards of the pack, the foreloopers of Unrest, Reckless spirits of fierce revolt in the ferment of the West.

We were bound to win and we revelled in the hards.h.i.+ps of the way.

We staked our ground and our hopes were crowned, and we hoisted out the pay.

We were rich in a day beyond our dreams, it was gold from the gra.s.s-roots down; But we weren't used to such sudden wealth, and there was the siren town.

We were crude and careless frontiersmen, with much in us of the beast; We could bear the famine worthily, but we lost our heads at the feast.

The town looked mighty bright to us, with a bunch of dust to spend, And nothing was half too good them days, and everyone was our friend.

Wining meant more than mining then, and life was a dizzy whirl, Gambling and dropping chunks of gold down the neck of a dance-hall girl; Till we went clean mad, it seems to me, and we squandered our last poke, And we sold our claim, and we found ourselves one bitter morning--broke.

The Dago Kid he dreamed a dream of his mother's aunt who died-- In the dawn-light dim she came to him, and she stood by his bedside, And she said: "Go forth to the highest North till a lonely trail ye find; Follow it far and trust your star, and fortune will be kind."

But I jeered at him, and then there came the Sailor Swede to me, And he said: "I dreamed of my sister's son, who croaked at the age of three.

From the herded dead he sneaked and said: 'Seek you an Arctic trail; 'Tis pale and grim by the Polar rim, but seek and ye shall not fail.'"

And lo! that night I too did dream of my mother's sister's son, And he said to me: "By the Arctic Sea there's a treasure to be won.

Follow and follow a lone moose trail, till you come to a valley grim, On the slope of the lonely watershed that borders the Polar brim."

Then I woke my pals, and soft we swore by the mystic Silver Flail, 'Twas the hand of Fate, and to-morrow straight we would seek the lone moose trail.

We watched the groaning ice wrench free, crash on with a hollow din; Men of the wilderness were we, freed from the taint of sin.

The mighty river s.n.a.t.c.hed us up and it bore us swift along; The days were bright, and the morning light was sweet with jewelled song.

We poled and lined up nameless streams, portaged o'er hill and plain; We burnt our boat to save the nails, and built our boat again; We guessed and groped, North, ever North, with many a twist and turn; We saw ablaze in the deathless days the splendid sunsets burn.

O'er soundless lakes where the grayling makes a rush at the clumsy fly; By bluffs so steep that the hard-hit sheep falls sheer from out the sky; By lilied pools where the bull moose cools and wallows in huge content; By rocky lairs where the pig-eyed bears peered at our tiny tent.

Through the black canyon's angry foam we hurled to dreamy bars, And round in a ring the dog-nosed peaks bayed to the mocking stars.

Spring and summer and autumn went; the sky had a tallow gleam, Yet North and ever North we pressed to the land of our Golden Dream.

So we came at last to a tundra vast and dark and grim and lone; And there was the little lone moose trail, and we knew it for our own.

By muskeg hollow and n.i.g.g.e.r-head it wandered endlessly; Sorry of heart and sore of foot, weary men were we.

The short-lived sun had a leaden glare and the darkness came too soon, And stationed there with a solemn stare was the pinched, anaemic moon.

Silence and silvern solitude till it made you dumbly shrink, And you thought to hear with an outward ear the things you thought to think.

Oh, it was wild and weird and wan, and ever in camp o' nights We would watch and watch the silver dance of the mystic Northern Lights.

And soft they danced from the Polar sky and swept in primrose haze; And swift they pranced with their silver feet, and pierced with a blinding blaze.

They danced a cotillion in the sky; they were rose and silver shod; It was not good for the eyes of man--'twas a sight for the eyes of G.o.d.