The Cremation of Sam McGee

The Cremation of Sam McGee

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
           That make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen strange 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 bloom 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;
Through 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," say he, "I'll cash her 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 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 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 clock 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 the 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 make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen strange sights,
           But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
           I cremated Sam McGee.

Robert Service (1874-1958)

"There are strange things done in the midnight sun
           By the men who moil for gold
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
           That make your blood run cold;"

The opening words of the Robert Service poem, "The Cremation of Sam McGee," set the scene for this humorous ballad of death, cold, and Cap's dedication as he fulfills his promise to the dying miner Sam McGee. A real campfire story and one of my favorite poems I first read it when we lived on Eastern Upper Penninsula of Michigan at Kincheloe AFB near Sault Sainte Marie. Although there was daylight every day and we could see the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) it wasn't unusual for the sun to go down as early as three in the afternoon. The scenery was beautiful but the long, drawn-out winters were arduous. It was cold there and the poem resonated with the familiar experience of bitterly of cold weather and what it can do to a person.

Originally a bank teller, Robert Service's life changed when he found himself transferred to Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory. Like everybody else, Service was smitten by the gold rush. Only Service mined words, not gold, and within five years was famous as the poet who had captured the essence of the fever, the adventure, the men, and the women. Tall Tale at www.writeyukon.com relates the local tale best:

"Robert Service’s classic poem is generally dismissed as pure fiction. However, a Sam McGee really did exist. He worked for a transport company in Whitehorse but the tale gets stranger still. The boiler of the Alice May, where the fictional Sam McGee was cremated, is based on a derelict steamer named Olive May. Service wrote the poem around a real experience relayed to him by a Dr. Sugden from Whitehorse (who Service lived with at one point). Dr Sugden was once sent out to tend to a sick prospector, but when he arrived at the cabin he found the man dead and frozen stiff. Sugden had no tools to bury the man, so he cremated him in the Olive May’s boiler and brought the remains back to town."

Printed privately for his family and friends the composition date is not known; it was first published for the public in The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses (New York: Barse & Hopkins, 1907): 50-54. (Also published as Songs of a Sourdough). The rhyme is in abcbdefe from or an heptameter which lends itself well to balladry; there's also a touch of cheerful bloodthirstiness about this melodrama.

Robert Service published this poem and its companion another rollicking ballad, The Shooting of Dan McGrew while he was working in the aforementioned bank. Service's first verse collections, Songs of a Sourdough (1907) and Ballads of a Cheechako (1909) were tales of hard-bitten prospectors and grim trappers were woven throughout improbable-but-true Yukon of humor and pathos, were an instant hit, and Service became famous. He published a number of subsequent volumes, but they never quite achieved the popularity that Sam and Dan brought him.

Mr.Service was often called 'The Kipling of the North' and his fans avidly read every line he ever wrote adoring his average-joe perspective, understanding of human nature, and his wry wit which shines through this bone-chilling story of a man named Sam McGee.

Work Robert Service published prior to 1922 is in the public domain in the United States.

More fun?
See:
McGee, Samuel: consultation report from the marge of Lake Lebarge

Sources:

The Cremation of Sam McGee

Public domain text taken from The Poets’ Corner

Robert W. Service (1874-1958) The Cremation of Sam McGee

CST Approved