The Bard of the Yukon

Robert Service gained fame as the ‘Bard of the Yukon,’ and before I was really aware of him as a specific writer whose name I remembered, I was very familiar from childhood with his ballads depicting the Klondike gold rush in amusing verse. Moving to Alaska seemed the proper occasion to finally read his collected poems, which I recently finished, but while his Yukon ballads are certainly his best work, perhaps his most resonant writings for me are his painfully self-aware musings on his mediocrity while living in Paris. It’s hard to know how to feel about relating to them, because on the one hand it’s encouraging that a tremendously successful poet whose work is being read a century on struggled with the sense that his work was not as good as he might have liked; but on the other, perhaps it’s discouraging that, instead of finding this as evidence to refute self-doubt, I actually tend to agree with the substance of Service’s self-criticism, in the sense that his work is more populist and at times plodding, rather than reaching the heights of poetry others achieved. To be clear, Service was a very good poet and a great expositor of both the air of the gold rush and the vagaries of poetic life in war-torn Europe. I certainly can’t write like he can. I just find the grain of truth in his self-critique discomfiting; he doesn’t seem to, to his credit, having openly accepted his limitations. I suppose this is a kind of mature humility that is probably more important than producing great art.

I’ve quoted or excerpted highlights from his work below, starting with his most famous, and greatest poem, which screams out the truth that life alone is not enough—we are filled with longing akin to madness. This is truly an enduringly great work of art, and it is absolutely true to what the country is like.

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.”

Other excerpts I wanted to share:

From A Rolling Stone:

“To scorn all strife, and to view all life

With the curious eyes of a child;

From the plangent sea to the prairie,

From the slum to the heart of the Wild.

From the red-rimmed star to the speck of sand,

From the vast to the greatly small;

For I know that the whole for good is planned,

And I want to see it all.”

Just Think!

“Just think! some night the stars will gleam

   Upon a cold, grey stone,

And trace a name with silver beam,

   And lo! ’twill be your own.

That night is speeding on to greet

   Your epitaphic rhyme.

Your life is but a little beat

   Within the heart of Time.

A little gain, a little pain,

   A laugh, lest you may moan;

A little blame, a little fame,

   A star-gleam on a stone.”

Pilgrims

“For oh, when the war will be over
    We'll go and we'll look for our dead;
We'll go when the bee's on the clover,
    And the plume of the poppy is red:
We'll go when the year's at its gayest,
    When meadows are laughing with flow'rs;
And there where the crosses are greyest,
    We'll seek for the cross that is ours.

For they cry to us: Friends, we are lonely,
    A-weary the night and the day;
But come in the blossom-time only,
    Come when our graves will be gay:
When daffodils all are a-blowing,
    And larks are a-thrilling the skies,
Oh, come with the hearts of you glowing,
    And the joy of the Spring in your eyes.

But never, oh, never come sighing,
    For ours was the Splendid Release;
And oh, but 'twas joy in the dying
    To know we were winning you Peace!
So come when the valleys are sheening,
    And fledged with the promise of grain;
And here where our graves will be greening,
    Just smile and be happy again.

And so, when the war will be over,
    We'll seek for the Wonderful One;
And maiden will look for her lover,
    And mother will look for her son;
And there will be end to our grieving,
    And gladness will gleam over loss,
As — glory beyond all believing!
    We point . . . to a name on a cross.”

Faith

“Since all that is was ever bound to be;
Since grim, eternal laws our Being bind;
And both the riddle and the answer find,
And both the carnage and the calm decree;
Since plain within the Book of Destiny
Is written all the journey of mankind
Inexorably to the end; since blind
And mortal puppets playing parts are we:

Then let's have faith; good cometh out of ill;
The power that shaped the strife shall end the strife;
Then let's bow down before the Unknown Will;
Fight on, believing all is well with life;
Seeing within the worst of War's red rage
The gleam, the glory of the Golden Age.”

From L’Envoi:

“Oh spacious days of glory and of grieving!

Oh sounding hours of lustre and of loss!

Let us be glad we lived you, still believing

The God who gave the cannon gave the Cross.

Let us be sure amid these seething passions,

The lusts of blood and hate our souls abhor:

The Power that Order out of Chaos fashions

Smites fiercest in the wrath-red forge of War….

Have faith! Fight on! Amid the battle-hell

Love triumphs, Freedom beacons, all is well.”

My Masterpiece

“It’s slim and trim and bound in blue;

Its leaves are crisp and edged with gold;

Its words are simple, stalwart too;

Its thoughts are tender, wise and bold.

Its pages scintillate with wit;

Its pathos clutches at my throat:

Oh, how I love each line of it!

That Little Book I Never Wrote.

In dreams I see it praised and prized

By all, from plowman unto peer;

It’s pencil-marked and memorized

It’s loaned (and not returned, I fear);

It’s worn and torn and travel-tossed,

And even dusky natives quote

That classic that the world has lost,

The Little Book I Never Wrote.

Poor ghost! For homes you’ve failed to cheer,

For grieving hearts uncomforted,

Don’t haunt me now…. Alas! I fear

The fire of Inspiration’s dead.

A humdrum way I go to-night,

From all I hoped and dreamed remote:

Too late… a better man must write

The Little Book I Never Wrote.” 

I take some humorous encouragement from his poet-friend MacBean’s overly pessimistic prophecy in hindsight (though perhaps I should not, for the manner in which is failed to come true owes much to the war which was about to break out the month after he said it, in July 1914): “We are living in an age of mediocrity. There is no writer of to-day who will be read twenty years after he is dead. That’s a truth that must come home to the best of them.” And in the same entry, Service adopts a very different mindset in regarding his own work: “And as it draws near to its end the thought of my book grows more and more dear to me. How I will get it published I know not; but I will. Then even if it doesn't sell, even if nobody reads it, I will be content. Out of this brief, perishable Me I will have made something concrete…”

While walking cross-country in Finistere, Service reflects on an ailment familiar to many of us: “My dreams stretch into the future. I see myself a singer of simple songs, a laureate of the under-dog. I will write books, a score of them. I will voyage far and wide. I will… But there! Dreams are dangerous. They waste the time one should spend in making them come true. Yet when we do make them come true, we find the vision sweeter than the reality. How much of our happiness do we owe to dreams?” 

“Calvert, my friend, is a lover as well as a painter of nature. He rises with the dawn to see the morning mist kindle to coral and the sun’s edge clear the hill-crest. As he munches his coarse bread and sips his white wine, what dreams are his beneath the magic changes of the sky! He will paint the same scene under a dozen conditions of light. He has looked so long for Beauty that he has come to see it everywhere….Calvert tries to paint more than the thing he sees; he tries to paint behind it, to express its spirit. He believes that Beauty is God made manifest, and that when we discover Him in Nature we discover Him in ourselves. But Calvert did not always see thus. At one time he was a Pagan, content to paint the outward aspect of things. It was after his little child died he gained in vision. Maybe the thought that the dead are lost to us was too unbearable. He had to believe in a coming together again.”  

From L’Envoi:

“And so, frail creatures of a day,

Let’s have a good time while we may,

And do the very best we can

To give one to our fellow man;

Knowing that all will end with Death,

Let’s joy with every moment’s breath;

And lift our heads like blossoms blithe

To meet at last the Swinging Scythe.”