Lost



"Black is the sky, but the land is white--
                (O the wind, the snow and the storm!)--
        Father, where is our boy to-night?
                Pray to God he is safe and warm."

        "Mother, mother, why should you fear?
                Safe is he, and the Arctic moon
        Over his cabin shines so clear--
                Rest and sleep, 'twill be morning soon."
        
"It's getting dark awful sudden. Say, this is mighty queer!
    Where in the world have I got to? It's still and black as a tomb.
I reckoned the camp was yonder, I figured the trail was here--
    Nothing! Just draw and valley packed with quiet and gloom;
Snow that comes down like feathers, thick and gobby and gray;
    Night that looks spiteful ugly--seems that I've lost my way.
"The cold's got an edge like a jackknife--it must be forty below;
    Leastways that's what it seems like--it cuts so fierce to the bone.
The wind's getting real ferocious; it's heaving and whirling the snow;
    It shrieks with a howl of fury, it dies away to a moan;
Its arms sweep round like a banshee's, swift and icily white,
    And buffet and blind and beat me. Lord! it's a hell of a night.

"I'm all tangled up in a blizzard. There's only one thing to do--
    Keep on moving and moving; it's death, it's death if I rest.
Oh, God! if I see the morning, if only I struggle through,
    I'll say the prayers I've forgotten since I lay on my mother's breast.
I seem going round in a circle; maybe the camp is near.
    Say! did somebody holler? Was it a light I saw?
Or was it only a notion? I'll shout, and maybe they'll hear--
    No! the wind only drowns me--shout till my throat is raw.

"The boys are all round the camp-fire wondering when I'll be back.
    They'll soon be starting to seek me; they'll scarcely wait for the light.
What will they find, I wonder, when they come to the end of my track--
    A hand stuck out of a snowdrift, frozen and stiff and white.
That's what they'll strike, I reckon; that's how they'll find their pard,
    A pie-faced corpse in a snowbank--curse you, don't be a fool!
Play the game to the finish; bet on your very last card;
Nerve yourself for the struggle. Oh, you coward, keep cool!

I'm going to lick this blizzard; I'm going to live the night.
    It can't down me with its bluster--I'm not the kind to be beat.
On hands and knees will I buck it; with every breath will I fight;
    It's life, it's life that I fight for--never it seemed so sweet.
I know that my face is frozen; my hands are numblike and dead;
    But oh, my feet keep a-moving, heavy and hard and slow;
They're trying to kill me, kill me, the night that's black overhead,
    The wind that cuts like a razor, the whipcord lash of the snow.
Keep a-moving, a-moving; don't, don't stumble, you fool!
    Curse this snow that's a-piling a-purpose to block my way.
It's heavy as gold in the rocker, it's white and fleecy as wool;
    It's soft as a bed of feathers, it's warm as a stack of hay.
Curse on my feet that slip so, my poor tired, stumbling feet;
    I guess they're a job for the surgeon, they feel so queerlike to lift--
I'll rest them just for a moment--oh, but to rest is sweet!
    The awful wind cannot get me, deep, deep down in the drift."

        "Father, a bitter cry I heard,
            Out of the night so dark and wild.
        Why is my heart so strangely stirred?
            'Twas like the voice of our erring child."
        "Mother, mother, you only heard
            A waterfowl in the locked lagoon--
        Out of the night a wounded bird--
            Rest and sleep, 'twill be morning soon."

Who is it talks of sleeping? I'll swear that somebody shook
    Me hard by the arm for a moment, but how on earth could it be?
See how my feet are moving--awfully funny they look--
    Moving as if they belonged to a someone that wasn't me.
The wind down the night's long alley bowls me down like a pin;
    I stagger and fall and stagger, crawl arm-deep in the snow.
Beaten back to my corner, how can I hope to win?
    And there is the blizzard waiting to give me the knockout blow.
Oh, I'm so warm and sleepy! No more hunger and pain.
    Just to rest for a moment; was ever rest such a joy?
Ha! what was that? I'll swear it, somebody shook me again;
    Somebody seemed to whisper: "Fight to the last, my boy."
Fight! That's right, I must struggle. I know that to rest means death;
    Death, but then what does death mean? --ease from a world of strife.
Life has been none too pleasant; y
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

4:17 min read
149

Quick analysis:

Scheme abab cdcD cefegghihiaa jkjkcxfx lalaamxm ananohohmgxgnpnp qrqrqdqD ststuhuhxvxvxxx
Closest metre Iambic heptameter
Characters 4,439
Words 816
Stanzas 8
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 12, 8, 8, 16, 8, 15

Robert William Service

Robert William Service was a poet and writer sometimes referred to as the Bard of the Yukon He is best-known for his writings on the Canadian North including the poems The Shooting of Dan McGrew The Law of the Yukon and The Cremation of Sam McGee His writing was so expressive that his readers took him for a hard-bitten old Klondike prospector not the later-arriving bank clerk he actually was Robert William Service was born 16 January 1874 in Preston England but also lived in Scotland before emigrating to Canada in 1894 Service went to the Yukon Territory in 1904 as a bank clerk and became famous for his poems about this region which are mostly in his first two books of poetry He wrote quite a bit of prose as well and worked as a reporter for some time but those writings are not nearly as well known as his poems He travelled around the world quite a bit and narrowly escaped from France at the beginning of the Second World War during which time he lived in Hollywood California He died 11 September 1958 in France Incidentally he played himself in a movie called The Spoilers starring John Wayne and Marlene Dietrich more…

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