Quoting: Rita Gemmell Don:I too am a great admirer of Robert Service and actually bought a volume of his works for my son for Christmas and he loves it.
My favourite is of course: The Cremation of Sam McGee.
Because of renovations, always, the book is in a box so I cannot post it. Perhaps when I finally finish this place I will be able to post it.
I have read that - its great! My brother came home from Arizona to introduce his ’intended’ and we had a big family party of course and my brother recited, from memory, the whole of ’Tale of Dan MCGreugh’(?)not sure of the spelling, but its the one about the guy getting frozen - it was hilarious.
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Poem
One of my favourites is "Night Mail" by W H Auden. Quite evocative with the rhythm of the poem resembling noises made by the train running on the rails and going over points etc.
NIGHT MAIL
This is the Night Mail crossing the border, Bringing the cheque and the postal order, Letters for the rich, letters for the poor, The shop at the corner and the girl next door. Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb: The gradient’s against her, but she’s on time. Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder Shovelling white steam over her shoulder, Snorting noisily as she passes Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.
Birds turn their heads as she approaches, Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches. Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course; They slumber on with paws across. In the farm she passes no one wakes, But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.
Dawn freshens, the climb is done. Down towards Glasgow she descends Towards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes, Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen. All Scotland waits for her: In the dark glens, beside the pale-green sea lochs Men long for news.
Letters of thanks, letters from banks, Letters of joy from the girl and the boy, Receipted bills and invitations To inspect new stock or visit relations, And applications for situations And timid lovers’ declarations And gossip, gossip from all the nations, News circumstantial, news financial, Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in, Letters with faces scrawled in the margin, Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts, Letters to Scotland from the South of France, Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands Notes from overseas to Hebrides Written on paper of every hue, The pink, the violet, the white and the blue, The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring, The cold and official and the heart’s outpouring, Clever, stupid, short and long, The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.
Thousands are still asleep Dreaming of terrifying monsters, Or of friendly tea beside the band at Cranston’s or Crawford’s: Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh, Asleep in granite Aberdeen, They continue their dreams, And shall wake soon and long for letters, And none will hear the postman’s knock Without a quickening of the heart, For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
Ray that was like a breath of hot steam! absolutely wonderful - thank you. I was surprised at Auden, it is very similar to something I read oh it must be 25 or so years ago by one the Poet Laureates was it Benjamin? but anyway I so enjoyed your piece as I have a love of the nostalgic side of steam trains and that definately was very evocative. Nice one for my archives.........
suppose befor the cremation we should have the .....The Shooting of Dan McGrew The bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon; The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune; Back in the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew, And watching his luck was his light-o’-love, the lady that’s known as Lou.
When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and the glare, There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear. He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and scarcely the strength of a louse, Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks for the house. There was none could place the stranger’s face, though we search ourselves for a clue; But we drink his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew.
There’s men that somehow just grip your eyes, and hold them hard like a spell; And such was he, and he looked to me like a man who had lived in hell; With a face most hair, and the dreary stare of a dog whose day is done, As he watered the green stuff in his glass, and the drops fell one by one. Then I got to figgering who he was, and wondering what he‘d do, And I turned my head – and there watching him was the lady that’s known as Lou.
His eyes went rubbering round the room, and he seemed in a kind of daze, Till at last that old piano fell in the way of his wandering gaze. The rag-time kid was having a drink; there was no one else on a stool, So the stranger stumbles across the room, and flops down there like a fool. In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway; Then he clutched the keys with his talon hands – my God but that man could play.
Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear, And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could bear; With only a howl of the timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold, A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold; While high overhead, green yellow and red, the North Lights swept in bars? – Then you’ve a hunch what the music meant … hunger and night and the stars.
And the hunger not of the belly kind, that’s banished with bacon and beans, But the gnawing hunger of lonely men for a home and all that it means; For a fireside far from the cares that are, four walls and a roof above; But oh! so cramful of cosy joy, and crowned with woman’s love – A woman dearer than all the world, and true as Heaven is true – (God! how ghastly she looks through her rouge, – the lady that’s known as Lou.)
Then on a sudden the music changed, so soft that you scarce could hear; But you felt that your life had been looted clean of all that you once held dear; That someone had stolen the woman you loved; that her love was a devil’s lie; That your guts were gone, and the best for you was to crawl away and die. That was crowning cry of a heart’s despair, and it thrilled you through and through – “I guess I’ll make it a spread misere,” said Dangerous Dan McGrew.
The music almost died away … then it burst like a pent-up flood; And it seemed to say, “Repay, repay,” and my eyes were blind with blood. The thought came back of an ancient wrong, and it stung like a frozen lash, And the lust awoke to kill, to kill … then the music stopped with a crash, And the stranger turned, and his eyes they burned in a most peculiar way; In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway; Then his lips went in in a kind of grin, and he spoke, and his voice was calm, And “Boys,” says he, “you don’t know me, and none of you care a damn; But I want to state, and my words are straight, and I’ll bet my poke they’re true, That one of you is a hound of hell … and that one is Dan McGrew.”
Then I ducked my head, and the lights went out, and two guns blazed in the dark, And a woman screamed, and the lights went up, and two men lay stiff and stark. Pitched on his head, and pumped full of lead, was Dangerous Dan McGrew, While the man from the creeks lay clutched to the breast of the lady that’s known as Lou.
These are the simple facts of the case, and I guess I ought to know. They say that the stranger was crazed with “hooch,” and I’m not denying it’s so. I’m not so wise as the lawyer guys, but strictly between us two – The woman that kissed him and – pitched his poke – was the lady that’s known Lou
