Now Eddie Malone got a swell grammyfone to draw all the trade to his store;An’ sez he: “Come along for a season of song, which the like ye had niver before.”Then Dogrib, an’ Slave, an’ Yellow-knife brave, an’ Cree in his dinky canoe,Confluated near, to see an’ to hear Ed’s grammyfone make its dayboo. Then […]

There’s sunshine in the heart of me, My blood sings in the breeze; The mountains are a part of me, I’m fellow to the trees. My golden youth I’m squandering, Sun-libertine am I; A-wandering, a-wandering, Until the day I die. I was once, I declare, a Stone-Age man,And I roomed in the cool of a […]

I sing no idle songs of dalliance days,No dreams Elysian inspire my rhyming;I have no Celia to enchant my lays,No pipes of Pan have set my heart to chiming.I am no wordsmith dripping gems divineInto the golden chalice of a sonnet;If love songs witch you, close this book of mine,Waste no time on it. Yet […]

I look into the aching womb of night;I look across the mist that masks the dead;The moon is tired and gives but little light,The stars have gone to bed. The earth is sick and seems to breathe with pain;A lost wind whimpers in a mangled tree;I do not see the foul, corpse-cluttered plain,The dead I […]

My job is done; my rhymes are ranked and ready,My word-battalions marching verse by verse;Here stanza-companies are none too steady;There print-platoons are weak, but might be worse.And as in marshalled order I review them,My type-brigades, unfearful of the fray,My eyes that seek their faults are seeing through themImmortal visions of an epic day. It seems […]

On the ragged edge of the world I’ll roam, And the home of the wolf shall be my home, And a bunch of bones on the boundless snows The end of my trail . . . who knows, who knows! I’m dreaming to-night in the fire-glow, alone in my study tower,My books battalioned around me, […]

It’s a mighty good world, so it is, dear lass,When even the worst is said.There’s a smile and a tear, a sigh and a cheer,But better be living than dead;A joy and a pain, a loss and a gain;There’s honey and may be some gall:Yet still I declare, foul weather or fair,It’s a mighty good […]

The Junior God looked from his placeIn the conning towers of heaven,And he saw the world through the span of spaceLike a giant golf-ball driven.And because he was bored, as some gods are,With high celestial mirth,He clutched the reins of a shooting star,And he steered it down to earth. The Junior God, ‘mid leaf and […]

When the boys come out from Lac Labiche in the lure of the early Spring,To take the pay of the “Hudson’s Bay”, as their fathers did before,They are all a-glee for the jamboree, and they make the Landing ringWith a whoop and a whirl, and a “Grab your girl”, and a rip and a skip […]

Oh you who have daring deeds to tell!And you who have felt Ambition’s spell!Have you heard of the louse who longed to dwellIn the golden hair of a queen?He sighed all day and he sighed all night,And no one could understand it quite,For the head of a slut is a louse’s delight,But he pined for […]

I Flat as a drum-head stretch the haggard snows;The mighty skies are palisades of light;The stars are blurred; the silence grows and grows;Vaster and vaster vaults the icy night.Here in my sleeping-bag I cower and pray:“Silence and night, have pity! stoop and slay.” I have not slept for many, many days.I close my eyes with […]

If you had the choice of two women to wed,(Though of course the idea is quite absurd)And the first from her heels to her dainty headWas charming in every sense of the word:And yet in the past (I grieve to state),She never had been exactly “straight”. And the second — she was beyond all cavil,A […]

At dawn of day the white land lay all gruesome-like and grim,When Bill Mc’Gee he says to me: “We’ve GOT to do it, Jim.We’ve got to make Fort Liard quick. I know the river’s bad,But, oh! the little woman’s sick . . . why! don’t you savvy, lad?”And me! Well, yes, I must confess it […]

My Father Christmas passed awayWhen I was barely seven.At twenty-one, alack-a-day,I lost my hope of heaven. Yet not in either lies the curse:The hell of it’s becauseI don’t know which loss hurt the worse —My God or Santa Claus.

I Oh, how good it is to beFoot-loose and heart-free!Just my dog and pipe and I, underneath the vast sky;Trail to try and goal to win, white road and cool inn;Fields to lure a lad afar, clear spring and still star;Lilting feet that never tire, green dingle, fagot fire;None to hurry, none to hold, heather […]

What are you doing here, Tom Thorne, on the white top-knot o’ the world,Where the wind has the cut of a naked knife and the stars are rapier keen?Hugging a smudgy willow fire, deep in a lynx robe curled,You that’s a lord’s own son, Tom Thorne — what does your madness mean? Go home, go […]

She lay like a saint on her copper couch;Like an angel asleep she lay,In the stare of the ghoulish folks that slouchPast the Dead and sneak away. Then came old Jules of the sightless gaze,Who begged in the streets for bread.Each day he had come for a year of days,And groped his way to the […]

When you’re lost in the Wild, and you’re scared as a child,And Death looks you bang in the eye,And you’re sore as a boil, it’s according to HoyleTo cock your revolver and . . . die.But the Code of a Man says: “Fight all you can,”And self-dissolution is barred.In hunger and woe, oh, it’s easy […]

There lies the trail to Sunnydale,Amid the lure of laughter.Oh, how can we unhappy beBeneath its leafy rafter!Each perfect hour is like a flower,Each day is like a posy.How can you say the skies are grey?You’re wrong, my friend, they’re rosy. With right good will let’s climb the hill,And leave behind all sorrow.Oh, we’ll be […]

I just think that dreams are best,Just to sit and fancy things;Give your gold no acid test,Try not how your silver rings;Fancy women pure and good,Fancy men upright and true:Fortressed in your solitude,Let Life be a dream to you. For I think that Thought is all;Truth’s a minion of the mind;Love’s ideal comes at call;As […]