The Cremation of Sam McGee 

Robert W. Service 

There are strange things done in the midnight sun 
    by the men who moil for gold; 
The Arctic trails have their secret tales 
    that would make your blood run cold; 
The Northern Lights have seen queer 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 blooms 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; 
Though 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 some 
    times 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,” says he, “I’ll cash 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 cursèd cold, and it’s got right hold till I’m 
    chilled clean through to the bone. 
Yet ’tain’t 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.” 

(page 1)

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