Dan McGrew, Sam McGee, and Other Great Service includes over fifty of Robert Service's best-loved poems, while Mark Summers' illustrations perfectly capture their mood.
]]>~Alas! upon some starry height,
The Gods of Excellence to please,
This hand of mine will never smite
The Harp of High Serenities.
Mere minstrel of the street am I,
To whom a careless coin you fling;
But who, beneath the bitter sky,
Blue-lipped, yet insolent of eye,
Can shrill a song of Spring;
A song of merry mansard days,
The cheery chimney-tops among;
Of rolics and of roundelays
When we were young . . . when we were young;
A song of love and lilac nights,
Of wit, of wisdom and of wine;
Of Folly whirling on the Heights,
Of hunger and of hope divine
]]>The north wind is keening overhead. It minds me of the howl of a wolf-dog under the Arctic stars. Sitting alone by the glow of the great peat fire I can hear it high up in the braeside firs. It is the voice, inexorably scornful, of the Great White Land.
Oh, I hate it, I hate it! Why cannot a man be allowed to forget? It is near ten years since I joined the Eager Army. I have travelled: I have been a pilgrim to the shrines of beauty; I have pursued the phantom of happiness even to the ends of the earth. Still it is always the same-I cannot forget.
Why should a man be ever shadowed by the vampire wing of his past? Have I not a right to be happy? Money, estate, name, are mine, all that means an open sesame to the magic door. Others go in, but I beat against its flinty portals with hands that bleed. No! I have no right to be happy. The ways of the world are open; the banquet of life is spread; the wonder-workers plan their pageants of beauty and joy, and yet there is no praise in my heart. I have seen, I have tasted, I have tried. Ashes and dust and bitterness are all my gain. I will try no more. It is the shadow of the vampire wing.
So I sit in the glow of the great peat fire, tired and sad beyond belief. Thank God! at least I am home. Everything is so little changed. The fire lights the [Pg vi]oak-panelled hall; the crossed claymores gleam; the eyes in the mounted deer-heads shine glassily; rugs of fur cover the polished floor; all is comfort, home and the haunting atmosphere of my boyhood. Sometimes I fancy it has been a dream, the Great White Silence, the lure of the gold-spell, the delirium of the struggle; a dream, and I will awake to hear Garry calling me to shoot over the moor, to see dear little Mother with her meek, sensitive mouth, and her cheeks as delicately tinted as the leaves of a briar rose. But no! The hall is silent. Mother has gone to her long rest. Garry sleeps under the snow. Silence everywhere; I am alone, alone.
So I sit in the big, oak-carved chair of my forefathers, before the great peat fire, a peak-faced drooping figure of a man with hair untimely grey. My crutch lies on the floor by my side. My old nurse comes up quietly to look at the fire. Her rosy, wrinkled face smiles cheerfully, but I can see the anxiety in her blue eyes. She is afraid for me. Maybe the doctor has told her-something.
No doubt my days are numbered, so I am minded to tell of it all: of the Big Stampede, of the Treasure Trail, of the Gold-born City; of those who followed the gold-lure into the Great White Land, of the evil that befell them, of Garry and of Berna. Perhaps it will comfort me to tell of these things. To-morrow I will begin; to-night, leave me to my memories.
Berna! I spoke of her last. She rises before me now with her spirit-pale face and her great troubleful grey eyes, a little tragic figure, ineffably pitiful. Where are you now, little one? I have searched the world for you. I have scanned a million faces. Day and night have I sought, always hoping, always baffled, for, God help me, dear, I love you. Among that mad, lusting horde you were so weak, so helpless, yet so hungry for love.
With the aid of my crutch I unlatch one of the long windows, and step out onto the terrace. From the cavernous dark the snowflakes sting my face. Yet as I stand there, once more I have a sense of another land, of imperious vastitudes, of a silent empire, unfathomably lonely.
Ghosts! They are all around me. The darkness teems with them, Garry, my brother, among them. Then they all fade and give way to one face....
]]>The Canadian Dominion by Oscar Skelton,
The Dawn of Canadian History: a Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada by Stephen Leacock
The Mariner of St. Malo, a Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier by Stephen Leacock
The Founder of New France by Charles Colby
The Jesuit Missions: a Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness by Thomas Guthrie Marquis
The Seigneurs of Old Canada: a Chronicle of New-World Feudalism by William Bennett Munro
The Great Intendant: A Chronicle of Jean Talon in Canada 1665-1672 by Thomas Chapais
Chignecto Isthmus: First Settlers by Howard Trueman
The Conquest of New France, a Chronicle of the Colonial Wars by George Wrong
Legends of Vancouver by E. Pauline Johnson
The Lure of the Labrador Wild by Dillon Wallace
Pioneers of France in the New World by Francis Parkman
A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador: An Account of the Exploration of the Nascaupee and George Rivers by Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior
Literature
Ralph Centennius (pseudonym, real name unknown, published 1883)The Dominion in 1983
John McCrae -- In Flanders Fields
Lucy Maud Montgomery -- Anne of Avonlea, Anne of Green Gables, Anne of the Island, Anne's House of Dreams, Chronicles of Avonlea, The Golden Road, Rilla of Ingleside
Robert Service -- Ballads of a Cheechako, Rhymes of a Red Cross Man, Rhymes of a Rolling Stone, Spell of the Yukon
Young Canada's Nursery Rhymes (short)
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