The Project Gutenberg eBook of Rhymes of a Roughneck

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Title: Rhymes of a Roughneck

Author: Frank J. Cotter

Release date: December 1, 2003 [eBook #10515]

Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Credits: E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RHYMES OF A ROUGHNECK ***

The Project Gutenberg eBook,

Rhymes of a Roughneck, by Pat O'Cotter

E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst

and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

RHYMES OF A

ROUGHNECK

BY PAT O'COTTER

1918

DEDICATED TO ALASKA

The home of the tin can and dog,

A waste of snow, ice, and moss.

The graveyard of ambitions,

The by-word for hell,

The home of the famed double cross.

Men come here for gold,

Ambitious for wealth

They stick—for they can't get away,

They dig, drink, and die,

And then go to hell,

To pay for their last sucker play—

ALASKA

CONTENTS

THE BIRTH OF THE LAND

A WOMAN, A DOG, AND A WALNUT TREE

WHEN THE WATER STARTS TO RUN

THE THROWBACK

THE MALAMUTE

UNSATISFIED

THE PROSPECTOR

IF

US FOR SAM

HOW LONG

THAT 30 U.S. ON THE WALL

FLOTSAM

TRYING

THE NEW MASTER

PROSPECTING

THE WOMAN THAT YOU PASS BY

WHY

AND STILL I LIKE ALASKA

THE BIRTH OF THE LAND

For a thousand years the Devil crouched

On the white hot flags of hell:

For a thousand years the Devil cursed

The imps that had chained him well;

For a thousand years the Devil sulked

And planned with his hell-trained brain

Of the things he'd do, when his term was thru,

And freed from the blistering chain.

He'd even the score with the men of earth,

And give them back pain for pain,

For all of the days he had felt the blaze

And the sear of the galling chain.

And it came to pass when his time was up

And hell's gates were opened wide

That all hell rang, and the clinkered imps sang

When the Devil passed Outside.

"I have served my time," the Devil said

As he halted by heaven's gate;

I have sweated in hell for a thousand years

And each year was a year of hate.

I have framed my plans for a thousand years,

I have worked out the details well

Now I'd have a place near the human race

As a sort of a prep school for hell.

The sons of men, on the earth below

Have scarcely a chance to sin,

Churched, belled and gowned, they mope around

By precept, all sealed in;

There is never a sin for lust of flesh

Nor sin for a man struck blow,

And the red blood crime of the olden time

Has passed with the long ago.

Hell's motley crew is scarce worth coal

When they come to the thing called death;

They squat on the coals with the real damned souls

And listen with bated breath,

To the tales of the earth, when the world was new,

When a man had to fight for his own,

When he took his wife at the risk of his life

And killed for a half-baked bone.

Now I'd build a place where a man might sin

For the sake of his own desires;

Make his the cause, and his the laws,

And the penalty, mine own fires;

Hast a place on earth to breed such men

Each for his own deeds blamed?

If you'll give me a place, I'll breed a race

That hell may not be shamed.

The God King sighed as he searched the plat

And the map of the earth below;

I have given a place for every race

In the belt from snow to snow.

I have given a home to each bird and beast

For even the fox has its hole,

I have given all land to the sons of man

And I've builded a home for his soul.

In the seven days that I toiled below

When I builded the seas and lands,

There was much to do, and I didn't get thru

And one place unfinished stands.

It's the part of my work that I really regret,

For I know it's the worst of the lot,

It's known down below as The Land of the Snow,

Or, The Country that God forgot.

It stands apart by the Northern Pole,

Unfinished, forgotten, alone,

And no man's hand has won this land,

And no man calls it his own.

The country is made up of odds and ends,

Unfinished mountain, and swamp and lake,

Stuff that couldn't be used when the earth was fused;

If you want it, it's yours to take.

"I'll take this plot," the Devil quoth,

"For I like your description well,

Yes, I'll take this place and I'll mould a race

That will be a credit to hell."

Then he whistled an imp from the uttermost part

And they dropped as the comets whirled

Past the white baked stars, past Venus and Mars

To the unfinished part of the world.

He landed at last on Denali's crest

And he gazed on his acres wide—

Barren and bleak, from each mountain peak

And swamp to the Arctic's tide.

The Devil grinned as he stood and gazed

Said he, "This is just what I need,

It's the place of my plan, for the downfall of man

Where I'll change his ambition to greed."

Then he summoned the legions of hell to his side

Named an arch imp to straw boss each crew.

Tho they gibbered and cursed, each one did the worst

With the jobs Satan gave them to do.

They tumbled the mountains high up, and on end,

Piled glaciers where streams ought to be,

And swamp land was placed in the desolate waste

That stretched from the hills to the sea.

They shook down all hell for a climate to fit,

But they couldn't get suited in hell,

So they took the worst parts and with devilish arts

They built one that suited them well.

They laid out muck swamps where the water lies dead

Bred mosquitoes and moose flies and gnats

Put the brown bear that kills on the barren brown hills

And with quill pigs infested the flats.

They shut off the sun for full half of the year,

Made each glacier a blizzard blown trap,

They strung out volcanoes half way to Japan

Each one with a hair trigger cap.

They planned for the coast line a system of storms

Each equipped with a ninety mile breath

And then spread o'er it all the fog that men call

The North Coast mantle of death.

Then knowing full well that man would not go

To a Land so forlorn to behold,

He salted the hillsides and some of the streams

With nuggets and traces of gold.

He tinted the hills with a green copper ledge

And covered the valleys with game,

All this for a lure, then the Devil felt sure

That the white man would fall for the same.

THE LAND

The lure of the little known places

Still calls, as it called to your sires;

The longing for wide open spaces,

The perfume of evening camp fires;

The hunting for treasure unfound yet

The knocking at fortune's own gate;

The doing of deeds for the joy that it breeds

Were all used by the Devil as bait.

The summers besprinkled with sunshine,

The hillsides a riot of bloom

With meadows a color shot grandeur

And valleys as still as a tomb.

With mountains of cloud-encased beauty

Or with stars shining down on it all

It's the trails we don't know that call us to go

And no wonder man heeded the call.

The winters, the trails all unbroken,

The far fields that beckon and call;

The song of the frost on the runners

And the Northern Lights high over all;

The trees in the bend of the river,

The streams that nobody has spanned;

The whisper of gold, the story half told,

All this by the Devil was planned.

When the trap of the Devil was ready

Widespread went the whisper of gold,

And the white men stampeded like cattle,

There never was tie that could hold.

The first mad rush to the Northland

When the scum from the four ends of earth

Came in with a rush, a scramble, a crush

Like scrap in a fusing pot hurled.

They came all untaught and not ready,

Spurred on in the mad rush for gold;

They died here unsung and uncared for

Of famine, and scurvy and cold.

They had the same laws as the wolf pack,

Stay up, for you die if you fail,

And the paths to the Northern placers

Are marked by their graves on the trail.

The towns that they started were plague spots

With brothels and dance halls aglare,

With cribs, faro banks and roulette wheels

And phonographs adding their blare.

All traps for the young and unwary,

All builded to help with his fall,

Never dealer was fair, never game on the square

For the Devil presided o'er all.

Nick fiendishly grinned when he saw his work

And he chuckled with devilish glee—

"When it comes to making an up-to-date hell

They've sure got to hand it to me.

For every ten souls that come in to this land

There's nine of them headed for hell

With never a fight, the percentage is right,

And my prep school is doing quite well."

Thus for a time he ruled this land

Where few might venture forth,

For never a man-made law held good

From Dixon's Entrance north.

He held this land in his claw tipped grip,

And he took his pay in souls,

Theirs was the blame, for they played his game,

And they paid for it on hell's coals.

But the Devil lost when the law came in,

Or the men who made the laws,

The gambling hall and the dance hall went

And the Devil was forced to pause.

For the life in the land develops men,

Men of an alien breed,

A new made lot, that couldn't be bought,

And strangers to graft or greed.

They loosed the land from the Devil's grip,

They pierced the hills with their trails,

They flagged the rocks at the harbor's mouth,

They paved the way for the rails.

They builded a school where the dance hall stood

And they brought in their children and wives;

They gave their all to the new land's call

And some of them gave their lives.

Now the pimp and the brothel have passed away

And the gambling hall is a dream;

A railroad train now follows the trail

Where we followed a nine-dog team.

A thousand stamps now sing their song

Where we panned on the gold shot ledge,

And a picture show now marks the line

That once was the frontier's edge.

The milch cows graze where the brown bear roamed

And a saw mill sings its lay

On a bar in the Yukon River

Where we panned one summer day.

They are raising wheat where the bull moose grazed

In the summers of long ago,

It seems kind of strange when we note the change,

But we'd rather have it so.

Yet, sometimes we dream as we camp at night

In the bend of the river's flow

Of the land that was, of the land we knew

In the days of the long ago.

The wild free land that bred the men

Who fought with might and main

And took this land from the Devil's hand,

And we'd like to see it again,

A WOMAN, A DOG, AND A WALNUT TREE

This Land is the orphan kiddie

Of the group with their stars in the Flag,

And it's looked on Outside as an alien,

Where its treatment makes honest men gag.

It's treated the same as the harlot

Who barters her body for pelf

And carries it home to her master

And is told to look after herself.

Of course we're an orphan, adopted

When cast off by the great Russian Bear

And our lot's been the lot of an orphan

And we've had a "stage orphan's" care.

Our coal land was grabbed by our Uncle,

Our copper and fur by the Jews,

While another gang took all our salmon

And corrupted our natives with booze.

Sam gave us an Army Commission

And told it to build us a Trail,

But all that Sam gave was permission—

He didn't come thru with the kale.

Now a trail in Alaska costs money

And when Dick tries to get a bill thru

Some jackass from Maine reads the figures

And "moves the amount cut in two."

Our Uncle Sam owns all the cables,

And the prices he gets are a sin,

It costs more for a word to Seattle

Than it does from Salt Lake to Berlin.

Our coast line is rugged and broken,

A menace to each ship that sails,

But Sam has no money for coast lights,

They get the same treatment as trails.

And Alaska is some husky orphan,

We can reach from the Gulf to B.C.,

We could stand with one foot in Kansas

While the other was washed by the sea.

We're allowed only one voice in Congress,

And that one bereft of a vote,

And has to get some one's permission

Ere he loose a protest from his throat.

Sam gave us a group legislative,

But barred them the making of laws,

They could only memorialize Congress

And give it the reasons and cause.

The cry of the world is for Home Rule

Yet imported fools crowd our bench,

And some of their mining decisions

Send up to high Heaven their stench.

Sam made us quit gambling, that's all right,

But one thing that nobody knows

Is why he allowed a bone head from Georgia

Hang the crêpe on our own picture shows.

We're all hedged about with restrictions

And, Sam, won't you in us confide

Why some of your damphool ideas

Are not tried out on some one outside?

This Land's not the land of the weakling

And the men up here know what we need,

And we're sick of your bunch from the Outside

Who's only incentive is greed.

We've stood for Pinchot's conservation

And we've stood for your carpet-bag horde

Who have grabbed off the jobs in Alaska

As a sort of political reward.

But, Sam, take a tip from a Roughneck,

Go slow now and don't crowd your hand

Or some day you may find that the orphan

Has quit creeping and learned how to stand.

Don't make us the goat for the theories

Advanced by some government cog,

And don't use this land as a station

For trying things out on the dog.

We gaze o'er the line of the Yukon

As we're watching our neighbors at play

And we wonder why Our Uncle Sammy

Don't treat his Alaskans that way.

We look at their broad graded highways

And then at our own half blazed trails

And, Sam, it comes damned nigh to envy

When we think of their thrice a week mails.

They don't know the word conservation,

Their resources, all theirs to use,

And when they ask their Uncle to help them

Their Uncle don't often refuse.

Their Uncle has helped them develop,

Furnished work there for men who were broke,

And, Sam, when it comes to Coast Lights

They make ours look like a joke.

But in spite of it all, Sam, we love you,

We love every thread in the Flag,

We love every stream in Alaska,

We love every cliff, every crag.

We're not like the Woman or Dog, Sam,

And we're not like the Walnut Tree

Cause we want to be loved in return, Sam,

And, Sam, you are blind, or you'd see.

Old English Proverb:

"A Woman, a Dog, and a Walnut Tree

The more you beat them the better they'll be."

WHEN THE WATER STARTS TO RUN

Along in early spring time, as the sun starts swinging North

To linger with the land it loves, and violets peep forth,

When the water starts to running thru the riffle blocks at noon

And you figure that you'll clean up, about the first of June.

You've been thru a long hard winter, but you see the end in sight,

You don't worry 'bout the cleanup, cause you know the pay is right;

But you're feeling sort of restless, as your blood warms with the sun

And your heart will start to itching, when the water starts to run.

You may leave your Camp at evening and mush away to Town

To dally with the hootch a bit, but the feeling will not down.

You may mix up in a poker game, or try the dance hall's lure

But you're fighting off a feeling, that the old cures cannot cure.

You've got that longing feeling that there's nothing satisfies,

And your pard can't interest you, no matter how he tries,

You're lonesome, moody, restless, out at Camp, or in the Town

Your mind will not rest easy, and your troubles will not drown.

Then memory pulls her picket pins, your thoughts go back thru years

To Outside, Home, and Sweetheart, and this last thought sort of cheers;

You recollect the days you spent beneath a Southern sky

And with regret you now remember they all ended with good-by.

It's the same old world-wide feeling that comes to man each year,

But it seems to hit us harder, when we're getting in the "clear";

It seems that it grows stronger, each year added to our life—

It's the hankering of the white man for a Pal, a Home, a Wife.

Man was not meant to live alone, why quarrel with Nature's laws,

God gave you strength to build a home, wherefor then do you pause?

Go forward like your father did, go forth and seek your mate,

For till you know a wife and home, you know not Heaven's Gate.

It's the deep inherent longing for a baby on your knee,

For the sound of children's voices, beneath your own fig tree.

The male instinct to have a mate, to love, to guard, to hold,

The one instinct that's left to us, that triumphs over gold.

With strength enough to build a home when once you get a wife

Bear gently with her follies, but guard her with your life;

Crowd full her heart with loving, yet hold a guarded rein,

Lest ye two now that rate as one, again be counted twain.

And if she come from Outside Camp, remember all is new

And give her time to find herself, teach her to lean on you.

And should homesickness grip her, and you find your wife in tears

Forget the jest and love her, remember your first years.

Then gone that restless feeling, gone all desire to roam,

Life's interest all is centered, deep in your Northern home.

Life waits in peace the cleanup, you pass up Outside joys,

And the tempter's voice is silenced by the music of her voice.

Then you're a true Alaskan, with a home won from the North,

God grant you children's voices when the violets peep forth,

And in the summer evening, beneath the midnight sun,

May your heart grow closer to her, when the water starts to run.

THE THROWBACK

He was born far east of the Rockies

Of a pet in society's van;

A wine-soaked daughter of pleasure

Bred back and threw a man;

A man-child who grew up a stranger,

Who never could learn the way

Of a people who gauge their pleasure

On a line with the price they pay.

Just a shred of an education—

A few years of college life,

A course in the card and wine room,

A year with a chorus-girl wife,

Then disgust with a life unnatural

Spurred on with the curse of the go,

He quitted that life forever

For the land of the gold and snow.

The Lure of the Land had gripped him,

The Land where you die if you fail;

The Land of the fabled fortunes,

The Land of the endless trail.

The Land of the lonely silence,

The Land of the cruel cold,

The Land of the lost ambitions

Alaska, the Land of gold.

There winters of long hungry hardships,

Summers of pest-ridden heat;

Dicing with death for a grub stake,

Risking his life for meat.

Tossing away his young manhood,

Giving the best of his youth

To the holes that he bedrocked on wildcats,

Where gold was scarcer than truth.

Ten years spent in Alaska

Gray haired, with cheeks all atan,

Beaten, but still unconquered.

Flat broke, but still a man,

Digging and sinking and drifting,

Trying to locate the "pay,"

With each hole a fresh disappointment—

Yet hoping to strike it next day.

Scorning the letters recalling,

Forgetting the friends he had known,

Turning his back on the Outside,

Facing the future alone.

A Cabin, a Squaw, and a Fishwheel,

A bend in the river's flow,

A band of half-naked breed kids—

He stayed there, a sourdough.

THE MALAMUTE

When the stars from the skies have fallen

And the smoke of the world's cleared away;

When Saint Peter marks "30" in Life's Book

And we meet there on Judgment Day;

When our trials and troubles are ended

And we're wise to the best and the worst;

When the time has arrived that the wise ones

Have told us the last shall be first;

When the men who've made good are rewarded

And the losers are turned loose in Hell;

That's the time that a lot will be learning

The true reason and cause that they fell.

And I wonder when Peter gets busy

As he works out the tenement plan,

And when Heaven's thrown free for location

Will he confine the locations to man?

If he does, my claim's open for jumping

For I can't figure Heaven complete,

If the dim distant trails of the sky land

Are not pattered by malamutes' feet.

Cause I know it would never seem home-like

No matter how golden the strand,

If I lose out that pal-loving feeling

Of a malamute's nose in my hand.

And it's that way with lots of Alaskans

These men of our own last frontier,

Who tear into nature unaided

And who scarce know the meaning of fear.

Who live on lone creeks all alone here

Where the living and dying are hard,

And where oft times their only companion

Is a malamute pup for a pard.

He's a real chum with things coming easy,

He's a pal with things breaking tough,

He's a hell-roaring fighting companion

When somebody starts something rough.

He's a true friend in sorrow and sickness

And he doesn't mind hunger or cold,

And he's really the only one pardner

You can trust when you uncover gold.

He's a guard you can trust at the sluice box,

And he'll watch by your cache thru the night,

And if some cheechako tries to molest it

That cheechako's in for a fight.

As a pardner he's silent, but cheerful

With never a kick 'bout the trails

And if it wasn't for him in the winter

There never would be any mails.

He pulls on our sleds in the winter

He's first in the rushing stampede

He goes where a horse couldn't travel

And besides that he rustles his feed.

He takes a pack saddle in summer

And follows us off thru the hills

And when we go short on the grub pile

He shares up whatever he kills.

'Twas a malamute first scaled the Chilkoot

At the time of the great Klondike charge;

'Twas a malamute first saw Lake Bennett

And left his footprints at La Barge;

They hauled the first mail into Dawson,

That Land of the Old Timer's dream,

And when Wada first drove in from Fairbanks

He was driving a malamute team.

They broke the first trail into Bettles

With no guide save the lone Northern Star;

They freighted next year to Kantishna

And from there to the famed Chandelar.

They know the long trail to Innoko,

Tacotna and Iditarod too,

For there's never a Camp in the Northland

But what these same malamutes knew.

They brought the first sport to the Nome Beach

Where they showed up in action and deed

That the North dog is game as they make them

And besides that has plenty of speed.

He came home with the bacon from Candle

Like a bat out of Hell, thru the snow,

And the plunger that cashed in his "out tab"

Was his pardner, the Old Sourdough.

So it seems to me kind of unfair now

As we drift toward that permanent Camp

Where the angels are running a dance hall

And a millionaire grades with a tramp;

Where the trails are located on pay dirt

And a grub stake can never expire—

Well, if they shut out my dog, they can keep it

And I'll "siwash" it, down by Hell's Fire.

They herald the growth of the Northland

And progress is marked by their trail;

A railroad now goes where they brought out

The Seward-Iditarod mail.

He's first in the growth of Alaska

And without him this land would be lost,

For there's never a stream in this country

That the malamutes' trail has not crossed.

But you can't tell me God would have Heaven

So a man couldn't mix with his friends;

That we're doomed to meet disappointment

When we come to the place the trail ends.

That would be a low-grade sort of Heaven

And I'd never regret a damned sin

If I mush up to the gates, white and pearly,

And they don't let my malamute in.

UNSATISFIED

Some sigh for the breath of the desert

Where the stifling heat waves blow;

Some pant for the trackless tundra

And the sting of the cold and snow;

Some long for the wash of a sultry sea

As it breaks on a tropic shore;

Some pine for the breeze of the northern seas

And the sound of the Arctic's roar.

The things that men love be countless

But they're seldom the same with two,

For the things I care for most of all

Might never appeal to you.

Some men run to wine and woman,

Some long for a wife and a home,

And he drifts with the tide, unsatisfied,

Who leaves these things to roam.

For he hates the sands of the desert

And the slimy tropic south,

Or his dreams of a northern fortune

Are as ashes in his mouth.

He loses the best life holds for man

His existence means discontent

Still he goes his way, until comes the day

When he quits it—a life misspent.

YET

Some sigh for the breath of the desert

Where the stifling heat waves blow;

Some pant for the trackless tundra

And the sting of the cold and snow;

Some long for the wash of a sultry sea

As it breaks on a tropic shore;

Some pine for the breeze of the northern seas

And the sound of the Arctic's roar.

THE PROSPECTOR

Where the ragged, snow-capped saw tooth

Cuts the azure of the sky

And watches o'er the lonely land

As ages wander by;

Where the sentinel pines in grandeur

Murmur to the glacier stream

As it, ice-gorged, gluts the canyon,

Never brightened by the gleam

Of sun at brightest noon day,

Nor moon of Arctic night,

And whose only link with Heaven

Is the fitful Northern Light.

Where the Whistler shrills in triumph

And the Big Horn dreams in peace,

Where the Brown Bear skulks to cover

Up where silence holds the lease;

Where the land is as God left it

Nor has known the tread of man,

There's a treasure ledge a-waiting—

Go and find it if you can.

If your heart be steeled to triumph

Nor beats less at your defeat;

Can you watch your whole world melt away

And still smiling, fortune greet?

Will your heart and brain and sinew

Crowd you on, when hunger's pain

Gnaws your belly and you're beaten,

Can you lose, and fight again?

Can you raise the cup of fortune

To your lips and bravely quaff

The draught she has prepared for you

And win or lose and laugh?

Can you see the fruits of hardships

Centered on one desperate throw

And know Fate's dice are loaded

Nor curse to see them go?

Then take your burden up again

And stagger up the trail,

You're bound to make a winning

Cause you don't know how to fail.

I, who've spent my youth in following

The lure of hidden gold

Must pass the buck to Nature

And admit I'm growing old.

And yet each spring I hear it calling

And it's music to my ears,

The call of lonely places

That I've listened to for years.

It's cost me all most men hold dear

Some forty years of life,

And all the joys that others get

In babies, home, and wife.

My life's been all to-morrows

And my family only dreams

And to the average plodder

I've missed it all it seems.

Still, I've never taken orders

And I've always liked the game,

And if life could be lived over,

Why,—I'd live it just the same.

IF

(A Steal from Kipling)

If you can hit the trail in zero weather

And laugh at frozen hand, or foot or face;

If you can eat your dogs, and still keep moving

And beat the rest, and hold the stampede's pace;

If you can stake and dig alone, unaided

And hold your ground, if needs be with a gun

And find the gold and have some lawyer steal it,

And lose, and start again, and call it fun.

If you can go a year on mouldy bacon

And fight the scurvy off with bayo beans;

If you can jump your socks and do your washing

And smile the while you patch your threadbare jeans;

If you can laugh when sordid hunger mocks you

And smile while passing strangers eat your grub;

If you can boost when everybody knocks you

And know him wrong who holds you but a dub.

If you can still the pain when Outside calls you

And choke back thoughts of friends you still hold dear;

If you can still the dreams when night befalls you

And wake and strike while eyes and brain are clear;

If you can wait and stick it out a-smiling

When longing letters come to you from home,

And then don't find the taste of "hootch" beguiling

You'll like this Land, from Seward up to Nome.

If you can bear the deadly strain of waiting

Till your turn comes, and fortune smiles on you;

If you can fight and lose and keep on fighting

And to your early promises stay true;

If you can go thru Hell to spend the summer

And cuss, and freeze, and starve the winter thru

And start in broke again another New Year

You don't need this Land to make a man of you.

If you can beat the Row, the Game, the Dance-hall

And all men's pleasures, that you know are sin;

If you can live alone, and not get lonesome

Nor heed the "lady" when she says "come in":

If you can pick a winner from the "wild cats"

And hold and hope when everything looks blue;

If you can give up everything you've ever cared for

Then ALASKA IS THE ONLY PLACE FOR YOU.

US FOR SAM

While all Europe is a shambles

And the whole world is at war,

And half the land the sun shines on

Is drenched in human gore;

When every Nation counts the men

It knows are tried and true

We send this message to you, Sam,

"Alaska stands with you."

You never treated us quite right—

You grabbed away our coal,

You reserved all our fire wood

And what we've used, we've stole.

You soaked us on our cable tolls

But we don't give a damn

Even at twenty-eight cents per word

WE'RE WITH YOU, UNCLE SAM.

You've squandered untold millions

On the filthy Philippines,

But you always made Alaskans

Go and rustle for their beans.

And your black and tan possessions

Tho they've cost you quite a few

Can never be depended on,

While we'd go thru Hell for you.

We're quite unused to luxuries

And we've always played alone,

When we asked for help to build our trails

You handed us a stone.

You've four-flushed on the railroads

But we don't care a damn,

If they monkey with the Eagle

WE'RE WITH YOU, UNCLE SAM.

You gave us lief to make some laws

Then tied our hands behind;

That gift to us was just the same

As pictures to the blind.

Your laws all have a "joker,"

Made to catch some Sourdough,

And it's hard to beat the game, Sam,

The way it's framed up down below.

We've always been the dumping ground

For your political misfits,

But Sam, if you're in trouble

We're willing to call it "quits."

We've never had an even break,

But we don't care a damn;

If the Lion growls, remember this,

WE'RE WITH YOU, UNCLE SAM.

We're used to meeting troubles

And if you put us to the test

You'll find Alaska loves you, Sam,

Far better than the rest.

But Sam, when this is over,

As morning follows night,

Pray give us your attention

And set some matters right.

We need some decent cable rates,

We need some decent mails,

We need some decent coast lights

And we need some decent trails.

You've given these to all the rest

But we don't care a damn;

If it's full grown men you're needing

WE'RE WITH YOU, UNCLE SAM.

HOW LONG?

As long as lure o' placer gold

Brings North the best ye breed,

As long as tales of camps and trails

Are planted with your seed,

As long as red blood courses thru

And warms adventure's sons,

They'll sally forth, bound for the North,

Misfortune's chosen ones.

As long as snow slides claim their toll

And glaciers split and rend,

And sweepers turn the flimsy craft

And trails come to an end;

As long as flashing Northern Lights

Flame in the Arctic sky,

Your boldest ones, your bravest sons

Come North to win or die.

As long as lust of wealth obtains

And gold will buy all things,

And bank accounts but mark the line

'Twixt shovel stiffs and kings;

As long as fancy rides free reined

And distant fields seem fair,

They'll seek the ship and make the trip

To the land of Do and Dare.

As long as birds mate in the spring

And moose run in the fall,

And widows win the college youth

And hold his heart in thrall;

As long as chance for fortune's smile

Can be centered in one throw,

This is the truth, the Nation's youth

Will hear the call and go.

As long as water runs down hill

And smoke goes up from fire;

As long as pleasure precedes pain

And women love for hire;

As long as Klondike widows

Trail thru Outside Cafés

Some one must stick on the lonesome creek

For there's ever the "him" that pays.

As long as "huskies" curse the moon

And creeks remain unnamed;

As long as quicksands mask the bar

And there's placer ground unclaimed;

As long as "pay" is found and staked

By some deep-sea-going Swede,

That gypsy trace that marks our race

Will out, then we stampede.

THAT 30 U.S. ON THE WALL

A man that's spent years knocking round "out in front"

Has most usually had lots of pals—

He's mixed up with pardners at various times

And he's had his affairs with the gals.

Now, a pardner's peculiar in lots of his ways

And he'll ditch you for various reasons,

And a gal never knows straight up from twice

And her mind seems to change with the seasons.

I've been in on good ground with pardners I've staked

And I thought they were square, till I found

They were trying to cross me, the miserable pups,

And whipsaw me out of my ground.

I've had a few pards that would stand the hard grind

And they'd stick through hard luck night and day;

They were all you could ask while you rustled for grub,

But they blew up when you uncovered the "pay."

Way back in the "eighties" when I'm just a kid,

I crossed up with a breed gal I'd met

One winter at Circle; she cleaned me that year

And skipped out with all she could get.

I've fallen for females in half of the camps

That's spread over this country up here,

But "square guys" or "pretzels" I couldn't get by

And none of them stuck for a year.

I got kind of discouraged and quit the she sex

And figgered I'd just herd with males,

But it don't make no difference, I guess that I'm wrong,

'Cause there's always the parting of trails.

I've had lots of dogs, but a dog always dies,

Or else the poor devil gets killed.

When you like 'em and lose 'em, their loss leaves a hole

That seems for a time can't be filled.

So pardners and females and dogs is taboo

And I know, 'cause I've fussed with 'em all.

There's only one pal that I know is true blue

And it's that Thirty U.S. on the wall.

She's stood by my shoulder and stopped a brown bear

And she keeps the cache full in the Fall;

She's got the one talk that a claim jumper knows

And she craves no attention at all.

I'm getting old now, and some sot in my ways,

And I don't loosen up like I did.

I'm slower to make friends and slower to trust

Than I used to be when I'm a kid.

So it's good-by to females and good-by to dogs,

And good-by to pardners and all,

For the only one pal that I find I can trust

Is that Thirty U.S. on the wall.

FLOTSAM

The China Coast's a dumping ground

And the South Sea gets its share

Of the kind of men that don't make good

The kind of man that never could

The men that never care.

A worthless, careless drinking lot

Combed out from between the Poles.

It's gin, and cards, a woman's breath,

Laughter and love and sudden death

And the Devil gets their souls.

It's a throwback to a weaker strain

That's washed by the Tropic tide.

And a mixture of Dago and Japanese

Latin and Jew and Portugese

Crops out thru a sun-tanned hide.

But the Northland gets a sterner breed

To fuse in its harder mould.

It's the breed of men that don't know fail;

That's the breed of men that hit the trail

For the fabled land of gold.

They're a sturdy, fearless, fighting lot

And they play the game to win.

They fall for women, wine, the game

And win or lose, they smile the same

And to quit is their only sin.

Here the Norsman bunks with the canny Scot

And the lad from the Emerald Isle

Works side by side with Russ and Dane,

North-bred men of brawn and brain,

Men that are worth your while.

So me for the land of the Midnight Sun

With the north lights in the sky,

Me for the land that mothers this race

Where you have to fight to hold your place,

Where you can't quit till you die.

TRYING

The dream of the white man ever goes out

To the fight that can never be won,

And ever he plans to do the things

That they say can never be done.

It's seldom he values the things that are

What he craves he may never gain,

Yet ever he tries, till the day he dies

And then feels he has lived in vain.

He climbs to the top of the highest hills

To search out the vales afar;

He bedrocks a hole on the deepest creeks

He hitches his cart to a star.

He's ever the first in the far stampede

As he chases the rainbow's blend,

But it's not the need, and it's not the greed,

It's the wanting to win in the end.

And whether he strives in the lofty range

Or tries in the crowded mart,

The longing to do what has never been done

Is uppermost in his heart.

He tries to build where none other has built,

Win the maid that none other has won,

To find the gold that he never can hold,

To finish what cannot be done.

He lives his life in a trying way

And he scorns the things that are tame,

If all seems lost, he still fights on,

For ever he plays the game.

And the efforts he makes as he strives to win

Are a credit to him and his breed,

And the gods will count and give full amount

And accept the act for the deed.

FOR

The dream of the white man ever goes out

To the fight that can never be won,

And ever he plans to do the things

That they say can never be done.

It's seldom he values the things that are,

What he craves he never may gain,

But ever he tries, till the day he dies

And then feels he has lived in vain.

THE NEW MASTER

As one who lays aside a task, where one has ruled alone,

I lay aside the crown of hell, and give to you my throne;

As one who feels his race is run, whose day is of the past,

I recognize your genius, and abdicate at last.

I go and leave you master, and I feel it's just as well,

For Hades lacks its master, until you rule in hell.

The world wags on and changes, old methods now seem weak,

And the changes of a thousand years, of these I fain would speak.

I've raised and sponsored many names, that darken history's page,

I've made them rulers of the world in many a by-gone age.

They all have shown a human turn, from Nero down to you,

But now my life-long dream of a super fiend at last seems coming true.

I've watched you since the faintest spark blazed in your mother's womb,

I've watched your hypocritic grief, beside your father's tomb;

I know the tainted blood that flows thru your each and every vein

That shows up in your withered arm, and feeds your fevered brain.

I saw it in your grandsire, where first it cropped out plain

When German gold was squandered to slay the honest Dane.

I fed you dreams of empire, and dreams of lust and greed

And the age old lust of conquest that taints all of your breed.

The strain that showed in Nero, cropped out alike in you,

You killed your gentle mother, but not as Nero slew.

I gave you hate of Albion, for all the world will tell

That could I kill that Anglo strain, I'd use the earth for hell.

I loathe the Anglo-Saxon race, I hate their English speech,

For where the Union Jack waves high, the Cross will ever reach.

Their ignorant millions till the soil, for they protect their own,

I hate it for I've never had this ensign for mine own.

I taught you how to use God's church, I built the path you trod,

I filled your mouth until you claimed, a pardnership with God.

I told you tales to tell to men, I coached you every hour

Until an egomaniac ran wild, mad with a lust for power.

I made an army for you then, the peer of all war lords,

I smiled the night you went away to visit Norway fiords.

I knew your Bagdad railway schemes, I knew the Austrian claims,

I knew that German gold would guide the mad assassin's aims.

I knew the schemes that you had planned, the one that nothing curbs,

I envied your diplomacy that blamed it on the Serbs.

My brain ne'er hatched a finer scheme, your armies marking time

And then the rape of Belgium, your premier man-sized crime.

And if one deals in hellish schemes, that one must stamp your worth,

You made a shambles of that land, you moved hell up on earth.

The cries of mangled maidens, the mutilated child,

The tears of butchered mothers, would drive an earth man wild,

And thru it all proclaiming, you were the tool of God—

O pardner in this orgy, no one suspected fraud.

You butchered, maimed and pillaged, hell never saw such sights

As the Prussian Guard remembers, on those first Belgian nights.

O shades of maddened Nero and his early Christian fires,

Could he have been in Belgium and have seen your funeral pyres!

Could he have seen your orgies he would have wept for shame

But had he your fiendish cunning, he might have done the same.

But the hated Saxon balked you and the desperate fighting Frank

Hurled back our super devils and took us on the flank.

Your inbred tainted offspring lost his chances at Verdun

Where curtained steel just saved the world from the grip of brutal Hun.

But Wilhelm, you are crafty, you are mine own I ween

Your fertile brain had brought to life the hell-born submarine,

You killed the unarmed merchantmen, you murdered in the dark,

You sent the child and mother to feed your friend the shark.

The world grew sick with wonder, no voice was raised to laud

And still you did it in your name, the name of you and God.

Where you have trod the world is dead, no sign of life or mirth,

You beat me, Bill, you beat my hell, with this of yours on earth.

You won hell's admiration and of all of mine own folk

When you paired off with the ghastly Turk, that was a master stroke.

And all the things you did before, just now seem weak and tame

Since you launched that Dardanelles campaign of pillage, lust and shame.

To fuss thus with my chosen race, my ally since time dates

Proclaimed that Kultur and the Turk are well matched running mates.

And tho I've watched hell's orgies, and stood by in fiendish glee,

I quit you, Bill, these Turkish stunts are far too much for me.

When officers from Kultur's class stand by and watch a Turk

Just disembowel a mother, why, Bill, it makes me shirk.

It makes me shudder and I've watched the master fiends of hell,

But none of them have brains like you, none do their work so well.

When Turk and German flood with oil, then set a school ablaze

And bayonet the babies, as they stumble thru the haze,

I yield the crown to you, Dear Bill, my pupil passes me

You take the rôle of Master and your pupil I will be.

I've worked for hell's best interests, my master now appears

For when your name is mentioned, the imps break into cheers.

The gavel of the poor damned souls, that long has rung their knell,

Is passed to you, I abdicate and now you rule in hell.

For years I've done the best I could, now I realize I'm thru,

And in the future I'm content to live and learn from you.

Your earthly work is finished, soon in hell you'll carve your name

And I shudder when I realize that hell won't be the same.

PROSPECTING

Looking for placer pangar,

Loafing about in the hills,

Getting your grub with a rifle,

Taking your drink from rills.

Getting your bed from the spruce tree,

Taking your course by your dreams,

Just camping alone in the mountains,

Siwashing along the streams.

Locating the hind sight on Nature,

Traveling alone and far,

Thinking with no one to guide you,

Digesting the things that are.

Back trailing the life that's past you,

Peeping at what's in store,

Pondering over life's mistakes,

Wondering, how many more.

Dreaming alone of childhood days,

Regretting some things that are past,

Recalling lost opportunities,

And chances too good to last.

Living your whole life over,

Recalling the daily grind,

Thanking your God that it's over,

Glad that you've left it behind.

But still regretting your errors,

Sad for some things you have done,

Wishing that you had coppered some plays

As you count them one by one.

Now living a life, clean, decent,

For man never sins alone,

Getting a grip on your ego,

Coming at last to your own.

You dream and you hunt all summer

Till you notice a chill in the air,

Then you think of your warm snug cabin

And you feel that you'd rather be there.

Then you head over unblazed passes

Till at last you herd with your own,

And though you located no pangar

You are better for being alone.

THE WOMAN THAT YOU PASS BY

My trade was old when the world was new,

Ere the pyramids rose by the Nile

Men quitted their wives, and gave me their goods

For the warmth of my kiss, and my smile.

For never was wife who could hold her man

By the honeymoon's afterglow

Did I veil mine eyes and beckon to him,

God's truth, and 'tis you who know.

My trade was old when the world was new,

Long ere Caesar ruled in Rome,

To spend their gold in a harlot's cell

Patricians quitted home.

And high born dames since the world began

Have learned to sit and to sigh

And to patiently wait for their lords to leave

The woman that you pass by.

I'm only a pawn in the game called life,

Yet I take what you never could hold;

I garner the kisses you'd barter life for

And with them, I gather your gold.

I garner the best of your manhood's prime

Then quit them when shattered in health;

I bring to heel the ones that you love

And smiling I shear them of wealth.

To garner the wealth that you hold in store

I must keep me surpassing fair,

For the life that I lead is an open book

And the game that I deal is square.

Stop—think of the maids and wives you know

As you drift thru life's subtle game—

How many are dealing as straight as I?

How many can say the same?

You give your all, and you slave your life

In a struggle to hold one man;

You think you're paid if he call you wife

And be true to you for a span.

You keep his house and you bear his child

And you walk with your head held high

But most of his love, and his kisses go

To the woman that you pass by.

The favors you give, I sell for gold,

And men prize what costs them high;

You never will learn that love goes out

With the tear in a woman's eye;

That the patient drudge who sits at home

And learns to save and to mend

Can never hold the light of love

But is doomed to lose in the end.

So I follow the old dishonored trade,

Bedecked in garments fine,

And the cream of the earth is saved for me

In raiment and food and wine.

And life to me is a merry game

Tho, sometimes, I weep and sigh,

For deep down in your heart, do you envy me

The woman that you pass by?

WHY

Why is it Alaskans all come back

When they've quit this land for good?

Why is it that no man stays away

When he's sworn to his friends he would?

Where lies the grip this country hath

All tangled around the heart

That takes a grip that can never slip

And can never be torn apart?

Is it the lure of the summer sunshine

That goes to the head like wine?

Is it the lure of the far flung meadows

Of the shadowy scented pine?

Is it the lure of going where none have gone

Of just being alone in the wild?

Is it the lure of the ancient glaciers

That were old when Christ was a child?

They come here wild, athirst for gold

They would win and run away,

They lose the stake they brought along

And then they have to stay.

Here each one follows his own bent,

The mines, the hills, the mart,

Work's but a name, the end's the same,

The country steals your heart.

There's a lure to the land of the poppy,

There's a lure to the land of your birth,

You swear you abhor it, and yet you'll long for it

As no other land on this earth.

There's the lure of the snow mantled vastness,

There's the lure of each valley and hill,

Of friends that you've met, that you'll never forget

And you'll want to come back, and you will.

AND STILL I LIKE ALASKA

I've tramped across her endless miles of tundra,

I've rafted all her rapid flowing streams,

She's kept me on the hummer,

I've fought mosquits in summer

And "siwashed" neath Aurora's wintry beams,

And still, I like Alaska.

I went a winter once on pay streak bacon,

I've gone a year on nothing much but beans,

I've squandered all my time checks,

The kind they give us roughnecks,

And haven't got a dollar in my jeans,

And still, I like Alaska.

I got a stake one time and wandered Outside,

And I'm telling you I surely put on "dog,"

But they got in between me and my poke

They sure did clean me

And I hit for Dixon's Entrance, on the "hog,"

And still, I like Alaska.

I don't suppose a man will live to beat it,

Some day we'll quit this land of ice and snow,

And when the Devil gits us,

And finds a place that fits us,

And we're working on the sulphur beds below,

I know I'll like Alaska.

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Table of Contents

RHYMES OF A ROUGHNECK

CONTENTS

THE BIRTH OF THE LAND

A WOMAN, A DOG, AND A WALNUT TREE

WHEN THE WATER STARTS TO RUN

THE THROWBACK

THE MALAMUTE

UNSATISFIED

THE PROSPECTOR

IF

US FOR SAM

HOW LONG?

THAT 30 U.S. ON THE WALL

FLOTSAM

TRYING

THE NEW MASTER

PROSPECTING

THE WOMAN THAT YOU PASS BY

WHY

AND STILL I LIKE ALASKA

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE