Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who write poems for gold;
Robert William Service wrote 19 books of verses
then died in Monaco 37 years ago;
Though he wasn’t a Shakespeare, he captured the feel here
And in the ways of the North he was wise;
So on the 11th of September, we pause to remember
the Bard of the Yukon’s demise.
He was not an Alaskan yet our state seems to bask in
the glow of his sparkling verse;
He described Arctic trails and its hard luck tales
the song of the North and its curse;
Not a real sourdough, yet his words seem to know
the hardships, the cold, and the gin;
Before “Northern Exposure,” he described the North’s odd lure
and a race of men that doesn’t fit in.
In 1896 with five dollars in his fist,
he arrived from his gray Glasgow town;
And sang songs, milked some cows, and picked oranges for cash
along America’s West Coast up and down;
And while still a young fellow he found work as a teller
in Whitehorse’s Canadian Bank;
There he met Sam McGee and then said, “It was he,
Lou, and Dan McGrew that’s to thank!”
But it was Robert’s landlady who said, “Now look, laddie,
Your poems are fine and they’re grand;
Send them on to Toronto and then you might want to
Write more and be known ‘cross the land!”
From that day on till he left the Yukon,
the North meant the same as his rhymes;
And riding high on his fame he married Germaine,
had a daughter, and wrote of the times:
Of World War I and the damages done,
and the grief for his dear brother killed;
And from a Brittany home o’er the world he did roam
and spent World War II in the Hollywood hills.
If he was cremated, nobody has stated
where his bones and his ashes were laid;
And though this bard died under Monaco skies,
We should throw them where his memory stayed;
On the good Lake LeBarge in its watery marge
Where secret tales made our blood run cold,
His ashes should be spread with the many now dead
who staked claims and were moiling for gold.
So let his soul sail and the husky dogs wail
While together his lines we recite:
“There are strange things done in the midnight sun…”
Rest in peace, Mr. Service, good night.
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