Latest / Edgar Allan Poe Poems / Songs of a Sourdough-Robert W. Service

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Songs of a Sourdough-Robert W. Service · Edgar Allan Poe Poems

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  Speaker 1: Part one of Songs of a Sour Dough by Robert W. Servis.
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  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: contact LibriVox dot org. The Law of the Yukon, the
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  Speaker 1: Parson's Sun and the Spell of the Yukon the Law
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  Speaker 1: of the Yukon. This is the law of the Yukon,
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  Speaker 1: and ever she makes it plain. Send not your foolish
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  Speaker 1: and feeble. Send me your strong and your sane, strong
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  Speaker 1: for the red rage of battle, saying, for I harry
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  Speaker 1: them sore. Send me men, girt, for the combat men
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  Speaker 1: who are gritted to the core, swift as the panther
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  Speaker 1: in triumph, fierce as the bear in defeat, sired of
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  Speaker 1: a bulldog, parent stealed in the furnace heats. Send me
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  Speaker 1: the best of your breeding. Lend me your chosen ones.
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  Speaker 1: Then will I take to my bosom them? Will I
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  Speaker 1: call my sons? Them? Will I gild with my treasure? Them?
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  Speaker 1: Will I glut with my meat? But the others, the misfits,
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  Speaker 1: the failures I trample under my feet, dissolute, damned and despairful,
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  Speaker 1: crippled and pulsed and slain, you would send me the
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  Speaker 1: spawn of your gutters, Go take back your spawn again.
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  Speaker 1: Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is
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  Speaker 1: my sway for my ruthless throne. I have ruled alone
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  Speaker 1: for a million years and a day, hugging my mighty treasure,
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  Speaker 1: waiting for man to come, till he swept like a
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  Speaker 1: turbid torrent, And after him swept the scum, the pallid
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  Speaker 1: pimp of the deadline, the enervate of the pen. One
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  Speaker 1: by one I weeded them out, for all that I
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  Speaker 1: sought was men. One by one I dismayed them, frightening
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  Speaker 1: them sore with my glooms. One by one I betrayed
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  Speaker 1: them onto my manifold dooms, drowned them like rats in
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  Speaker 1: my rivers, starved them like curs on my planes, rotted
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  Speaker 1: the flesh that was left them, poisoned the blood in
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  Speaker 1: their veins, burst with my winter upon them, searing forever
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  Speaker 1: their sight, lashed them with fungus, white faces, whimpering wild
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  Speaker 1: in the night, staggering blind through the storm world, stumbling
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  Speaker 1: mad through the snow, frozen stiff in the ice pack,
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  Speaker 1: brittle and bent like a bow, featureless, formless, forsaken, scented
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  Speaker 1: by wolves in their flight, left for the wind to
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  Speaker 1: make music through ribs that are glittering white, gnawing the
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  Speaker 1: black crust of failure, searching the pit of despair, crooking
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  Speaker 1: the toe in the trigger, trying to patter a prayer,
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  Speaker 1: going outside with an escort, raving with lips all the foam,
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  Speaker 1: writing a check for a million, driveling feebly of home,
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  Speaker 1: lost like a louse in the burning or else in
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  Speaker 1: tented town, seeking a drunkard solace, sinking and sinking down,
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  Speaker 1: steeped in the slime at the bottom, dead to a
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  Speaker 1: decent world, lost with the human flotsam far on the frontier,
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  Speaker 1: hurled in the camp at the bend of the river,
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  Speaker 1: with its dozen saloons. Are glare, his gambling dens, a riot,
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  Speaker 1: his gramophones, all a blare, crimped with the crimes of
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  Speaker 1: a city, sinriden and bridled with lies. In the hush
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  Speaker 1: of my mountain, vastness, in the flush of my midnight skies,
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  Speaker 1: plague spots, yet tools of my purpose, So nathless I
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  Speaker 1: suffer them thrive, crushing my weak in their clutches, that
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  Speaker 1: only my strong may survive. But the others, the men
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  Speaker 1: of my metal, the men who establish my fame onto
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  Speaker 1: its ultimate issue, winning me honor not shame, searching my
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  Speaker 1: uttermost valleys, fighting each step as they go, shooting the
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  Speaker 1: wrath of my rapids, scaling my ramparts of snow, ripping
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  Speaker 1: the guts of my mountains, looting the beds of my creeks.
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  Speaker 1: Them will I take to my bosom and speak as
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  Speaker 1: a mother speaks. I am the land that listens. I
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  Speaker 1: am the land that broods, steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline
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  Speaker 1: waters and woods. Long have I waited, lonely, shunned as
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  Speaker 1: a finger, cursed, monstrous, moody, pathetic, the last of the
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  Speaker 1: lands and the first visioning camphires at twilight, sad with
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  Speaker 1: a longing, forlorn, feeling my womb o'er pregnant with the
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  Speaker 1: seeds of cities unborn. Wild and wide are my borders
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  Speaker 1: stern as death is my sway. And I wait for
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  Speaker 1: the men who will win me. And I will not
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  Speaker 1: be won in a day. And I will not be
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  Speaker 1: won by weaklings, subtle, suave and mild, but by men
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  Speaker 1: with the hearts of vikings and the simple faith of
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  Speaker 1: a child desperate, strong, and resistless, unthrottled by fear, or
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  Speaker 1: defeat them? Will I gild with my treasure them? Will
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  Speaker 1: I glut with my meat? Lofty? I stand from each
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  Speaker 1: sister land, patient and wearily, wise, with the weight of
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  Speaker 1: a world of sadness, in my quiet, passionless eyes, dreaming
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  Speaker 1: alone of a people, dreaming alone of a day when
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  Speaker 1: men shall not rape my riches and curse me, and
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  Speaker 1: go away, making a board of my bounty, fouling the
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  Speaker 1: hand that gave till I rise in my wrath and
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  Speaker 1: I sweep in their path, and I stamp them into
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  Speaker 1: a grave, dreaming of men who will bless me, of
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  Speaker 1: women esteeming me good, of children born in my borders,
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  Speaker 1: of radiant motherhood, her cities leaping to stature of fame,
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  Speaker 1: like a flag unfurled, as I pour the tide of
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  Speaker 1: my riches in the eager lap of the world. This
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  Speaker 1: is the lore of the Yukon, that only the strong
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  Speaker 1: shall thrive, That surely the weak shall perish, and only
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  Speaker 1: the fits survive, dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and pulsed
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  Speaker 1: and slain. This is the will of the Yukon, Lo
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  Speaker 1: how she makes it plain the parson's son. This is
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  Speaker 1: the song of the Parson's Sun, as he squats in
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  Speaker 1: his shack alone on the wild weird nights, when the
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  Speaker 1: northern lights shoot up from the frozen zone and it's
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  Speaker 1: sixty below and couched in the snow, the hungry huskies moan,
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  Speaker 1: I'm one of the Arctic Brotherhood. I'm an old time pioneer.
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  Speaker 1: I came with the first. Oh God, how I've cursed
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  Speaker 1: this Yukon, but still I'm here. I've sweated a thirst
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  Speaker 1: in its summer heat. I've frozen and starved in its cold.
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  Speaker 1: I've followed my dreams by its thousand streams. I've toiled
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  Speaker 1: and moiled for its gold. Look at my eyes, been
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  Speaker 1: snowblind twice. Look where my foot's half gone, And that
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  Speaker 1: gruesome scar on my left cheek with a frost fiend
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  Speaker 1: bit to the bone. At each one a brand of
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  Speaker 1: this devil's land where I've played and I've lost the game,
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  Speaker 1: a broken wreck with a craze for hooch and never
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  Speaker 1: a cent to my name. This mining is only a gambol.
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  Speaker 1: The worst is as good as the best. I was
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  Speaker 1: in with a bunch, and I might have come out
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  Speaker 1: right on top with the rest, with Cormac, Ladieu and MacDonald.
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  Speaker 1: Oh God, but it's hell to think of the thousands
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  Speaker 1: of thousands I've squandered on cards and women and drink.
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  Speaker 1: In the early days, we were just a few, and
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  Speaker 1: we hunted and fished around, nor dreamt by our lonely
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  Speaker 1: campfires of the wealth that lay under the ground. We
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  Speaker 1: traded in skins and whiskey, and I've often slept under
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  Speaker 1: the shade of that lone birch tree on Bonanza where
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  Speaker 1: the first big find was made. We were just like
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  Speaker 1: a great, big family, and every man had his squaw,
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  Speaker 1: and we lived such a wild, free, fearless life beyond
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  Speaker 1: the pale of the law till suddenly came a whisper,
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  Speaker 1: and it maddened us every man. And I got in
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  Speaker 1: on Bonanza before the big rush began. Oh those DAWs
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  Speaker 1: and days, and the sin and the blaze, and the
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  Speaker 1: town all open wide. If God made me in his likeness,
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  Speaker 1: sure he let the devil inside. But we all were mad,
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  Speaker 1: both the good and the bad. And as for the women, well,
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  Speaker 1: no spot on the map. In so short a space
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  Speaker 1: as hustled more souls to hell. Money was just like
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  Speaker 1: dirt there, easy to get and to spend. I was
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  Speaker 1: all caked in on a dance hold jade, but she
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  Speaker 1: shook me in the end. It put me queer of
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  Speaker 1: a nearlier year. I never drew sober breath till I
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  Speaker 1: found myself in the bug house ward with a claim
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  Speaker 1: staked out on death. Twenty years in the Yukon, struggling
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  Speaker 1: along its creeks, roaming its giant valleys, scaling its godlike peaks,
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  Speaker 1: bathed in its fiery sunsets, fighting its fiendish cold. Twenty
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  Speaker 1: years in the Yukon. Twenty years and I'm old, old
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  Speaker 1: and weak, But no matter. There's hooch in the bottle. Still.
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  Speaker 1: I'll hitch up the dogs tomorrow and mush down the
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  Speaker 1: trail to Bill. It's so long dark and I'm lonesome.
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  Speaker 1: I'll just lay down on the bed to morrow. I'll
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  Speaker 1: go to morrow. I guess I'll play on the red
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  Speaker 1: come kit. Your pony is saddled. I'm waiting dear in
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  Speaker 1: the court Minnie, you devil. I'll kill you if you
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  Speaker 1: skip with that flossy sport. How much does he go
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  Speaker 1: to the pan Bill, play up school and play the
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  Speaker 1: game our Father, which art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.
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  Speaker 1: This was the song of the Parson's Sun. As he
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  Speaker 1: lay in his bunk alone here the fire went out,
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  Speaker 1: and the cold crept in, and his blue lips ceased
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  Speaker 1: to moan, and the hunger maddened malamutes had torn him
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  Speaker 1: flesh from bone, the spell of the Yukon. I wanted
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  Speaker 1: the gold, and I sought it. I scrabbled and mucked
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  Speaker 1: like a slave. Was it famine or scurvy? I fought it.
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  Speaker 1: I hurled my youth into the gray. I wanted the gold,
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  Speaker 1: and I got it, came out with a fortune last fall.
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  Speaker 1: Yet somehow life's not what I thought it, and somehow
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  Speaker 1: the gold isn't all. No, there's a land. Have you
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  Speaker 1: seen it? It's the cussardest land that I know, from
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  Speaker 1: the big dizzy mountains that screen it to the deep
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  Speaker 1: deathlike valleys below. Some say God was tired when he
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  Speaker 1: made it. Some say it's a fine land to shun. Maybe,
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  Speaker 1: but there's summers would trade it for no land on earth.
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  Speaker 1: And I'm one. You come to get rich, damn good reason.
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  Speaker 1: You feel like an exile. At first, You hate it
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  Speaker 1: like hell for a season, and then you were worse
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  Speaker 1: than the worst. It grips you like some kinds of sinning.
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  Speaker 1: It twists you from foe to a friend. It seems
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  Speaker 1: it's been since the beginning. It seems it would be
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  Speaker 1: to the end. I've stood in some mighty mouthed hollow
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  Speaker 1: that's plumed full of hush to the brim. I've watched
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  Speaker 1: the big husky sun wallow in crimson and gold and
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  Speaker 1: grow dim till the moon set, the pearly peaks gleaming,
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  Speaker 1: and the stars tumbled out neck and crop. And I
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  Speaker 1: thought that I surely was dreaming, with the peace of
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  Speaker 1: the world piled on top. The summer no sweeter as ever,
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  Speaker 1: the sunshiny woods all a thrill, the grailing a leap
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  Speaker 1: in the river, the big horn asleep on the hill,
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  Speaker 1: the strong life that never knows. Harness, the wilds where
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  Speaker 1: the Cariboo called the freshness, the freedom, the farness, Oh God,
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  Speaker 1: how I'm stuck on it all the winter. The brightness
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  Speaker 1: that blinds you, the white land locked tight as a drum,
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  Speaker 1: The cold fear that follows and finds you, the silence
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  Speaker 1: that bludgeons you dumb, The snows that are older than history,
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  Speaker 1: the woods where the weird shadows, slant, the stillness, the moonlight,
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  Speaker 1: the mystery. I've made them goodbye, but I can't. There's
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  Speaker 1: a land where the mountains are nameless and the rivers
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  Speaker 1: all run God knows where. There are lives that are
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  Speaker 1: erring and aimless, and deaths that just hang by a hair.
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  Speaker 1: There are hardships that nobody reckons. There are valleys unpeopled,
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  Speaker 1: and still there's a land. Oh it beckons and beckons,
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  Speaker 1: and I want to go back, and I will. They're
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  Speaker 1: making my money diminish. I'm sick of the taste of champagne.
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  Speaker 1: Thank God. When I'm skinned to a finish, I'll pike
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  Speaker 1: to the Yukon again. I'll fight, and you bet it's
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  Speaker 1: no sham fight. It's hell. But I've been there before
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  Speaker 1: and it's better than this by a damn sight. So
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  Speaker 1: me for the Yukon once more. There's gold, and it's
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  Speaker 1: haunting and haunting. It's luring me on as of old.
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  Speaker 1: Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting so much
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  Speaker 1: as just finding the gold. The great big broad land
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  Speaker 1: way up yonder is the forests where silence has lease.
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  Speaker 1: It's the beauty that thrills me. With wonder. It's the
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  Speaker 1: stillness that fills me with peace. End of Part one,
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  Speaker 1: Part two of Songs of a Sour Dough by Robert W. Servis.
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  Speaker 1: This liveryvox recording is in the public domain. The Call
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  Speaker 1: of the Wild, the Lone Trail, the Heart of the
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  Speaker 1: Sour Dough, the three voices, the Call of the Wild.
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  Speaker 1: Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there's nothing else
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  Speaker 1: to gaze on? Set pieces and drop curtain scenes galore,
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  Speaker 1: big mountains heave to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon
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  Speaker 1: black canyons where the rapids rip. And have you swept
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  Speaker 1: the vision, the valley with the green streams streaking through it?
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  Speaker 1: Search the vastness for something you have lost. Have you
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  Speaker 1: strung your soul to silence? Then, for God's sake, go
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  Speaker 1: and do it. Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay
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  Speaker 1: the cost. Have you wandered in the wilderness, the sagebrush desolation,
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  Speaker 1: the bunched grass levels where the cattle graze. Have you
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: whistled bits of rag time at the end of all
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  Speaker 1: creation and learned to know the desert's little ways? Have
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  Speaker 1: you camped upon the foothills? Have you galloped o'er the ranges.
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  Speaker 1: Have you roamed the arid sunlands through and through? Have
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  Speaker 1: you chummed up with the mesa? Do you know its
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  Speaker 1: moods and changes? Then listen to the wild. It's calling you.
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  Speaker 1: Have you known the great white silence? Not a snow gem, twig,
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  Speaker 1: a quiver? He turned truths that shame our soothing lies?
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  Speaker 1: Have your broken trail on snow shoes, mushed your huskies
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  Speaker 1: up the river, dared the unknown, led the way, and
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  Speaker 1: clutched the prize. Have you marked the maps, void spaces,
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  Speaker 1: mingled with the mongrel races, felt the savage strength of
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  Speaker 1: brute in every few, and though grim as hell, the
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  Speaker 1: worst is? Can you round it off with curses? Then
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  Speaker 1: hearken to the wild. It's wanting you. Have you suffered,
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  Speaker 1: starved and triumphed, groveled down yet grasped at glory, grown
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  Speaker 1: bigger in the bigness of the hole, done things just
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  Speaker 1: for the doing. Letting babblers tell the story seeing through
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  Speaker 1: the nice veneer the naked soul. Have you seen God
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  Speaker 1: in his splendors, heard the text that nature renders? You'll
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  Speaker 1: never hear it in the family pew The simple things,
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  Speaker 1: the true thing, the silent men who do things. Then
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  Speaker 1: listen to the wild. It's calling you. They've cradled you
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  Speaker 1: in custom, they have primed you with their preaching. They
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  Speaker 1: have soaked you in convention, through and through. They've put
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  Speaker 1: you in a showcase. You're a credit to their teaching.
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  Speaker 1: But can't you hear the wild it's calling you. Let
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  Speaker 1: us probe the silent places. Let us seek what luck
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  Speaker 1: betide us. Let us journey to a lonely land. I
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  Speaker 1: know there's a whisper on the night wind. There's a
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  Speaker 1: star a gleam to guide us, and the wild is
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  Speaker 1: calling calling. Let us go the lone trail. Ye who
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  Speaker 1: know the lone trail fain would follow it, though it
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  Speaker 1: leads to glory of the darkness of the pit. Ye
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  Speaker 1: who take the lone trail, bid your love goodbye the
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  Speaker 1: lone trail, The lone trail follow till you die. The
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  Speaker 1: trails of the world be countless, and most of the
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  Speaker 1: trails be tried. You tread on the heels of the
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  Speaker 1: many till you come where the ways divide, and one
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  Speaker 1: lies safe in the sunlight, and the other is dreary,
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  Speaker 1: and one yet you look a slant at the lone trail,
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  Speaker 1: and the lone trail yours you on, and somehow you're
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  Speaker 1: sick of the highway, with its noise and its easy needs,
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  Speaker 1: and you seek the risk of the byway, and you
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  Speaker 1: wreck not where it leads. And sometimes it leads to
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  Speaker 1: the desert, and the tong swells out of the mouth,
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  Speaker 1: and you stagger blind to the mirage, to die in
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  Speaker 1: the mocking drouth. And sometimes it leads to the mountain,
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  Speaker 1: to the light of the lone camp fire, and you
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  Speaker 1: gnaw your belt in the anguish of hunger goaded desire.
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  Speaker 1: As sometimes it leads to the southland, to the swamp
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  Speaker 1: where the orchid grows, and you rave to your grave
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  Speaker 1: with the fever, and they rob the has for its clothes.
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  Speaker 1: And sometimes it leads to the Northland, and the scurvy
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  Speaker 1: softens your bones, and your flesh dints in like putty,
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  Speaker 1: and you spit out your teeth like stones. And sometimes
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  Speaker 1: it leads to a coral reef in the wash of
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  Speaker 1: a weedy sea, and you sit and stare at the
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  Speaker 1: empty glare where the gulls wake greedily. And sometimes it
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  Speaker 1: leads to an arctic trail and the snows, where your
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  Speaker 1: torn feet freeze, and you whittle away the useless clay
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  Speaker 1: and crawl on your hands and knees. Often it leads
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  Speaker 1: to the dead pit. Always it leads to pain. By
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  Speaker 1: the bones of your brothers, you know it. But oh
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: to follow your fane. By your bones, they will follow
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  Speaker 1: behind you till the ways of the world are made plain.
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  Speaker 1: Bid goodbye to sweetheart, Bid goodbye to friend. The lone trail,
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  Speaker 1: the lone trail. Follow to the end, Tarry not and
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  Speaker 1: fear not. Chosen of the true lover of the lone trail,
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  Speaker 1: the lone trail waits for you the heart of the
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  Speaker 1: sour dough, there where the mighty mountains bear their fangs
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  Speaker 1: on to the moon. There Where the sullen sun dogs
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  Speaker 1: glare in the snow bright bitter noon, and the glacier
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  Speaker 1: gutted streams sweep down at the clarion call of June.
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  Speaker 1: There Where the livid tundras keep their tryst with the
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  Speaker 1: tranquil snows. There Where the silences are spawned, and the
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: light of hell fire flows into the bowl of the
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: midnight sky, violent amber and rose. There Where the rapids
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: churn and roar, and the ice floes bellowing run, Where
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: the tortured, twisted rivers of blood rush to the setting sun.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: I pack my kit and I'm going boys ere. Another
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  Speaker 1: day is done. I knew it would call, or soon
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  Speaker 1: or late as it calls, the whirring winds. It's the
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  Speaker 1: olden lure, It's the golden lure. It's the lure of
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  Speaker 1: the timeless things. And tonight, oh God of the trails Untrod,
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  Speaker 1: how it winds in my heart strings. I'm sick to
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: death of your well groomed gods, your make believe and
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: your show. I long for a whiff of bacon and beans,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: a snug shakedown in the snow, a trail to break,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: and a life at stake, and another bout with the foe,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: with the raw ribbed wild that abores all life, the
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: wild that would crush and rend. I have clinched and
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: closed with the naked North. I have learned to defy
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: and defend, shoulder to shoulder. We fought it out. Yet
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: the wild must win. In the end. I've flouted the wild.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: I've followed its lure, fearless, familiar, alone by all that
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: the battle means and makes, I claim that land for
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: mine own. Yet the wild must win, And a day
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: will come when I shall be overthrown. Then, when as
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: wolf dogs fight, We've fought the lean wolf land, and
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: I fought and bled till the snows are red under
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: the reeling sky. Even as lean wolf dog goes down,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: will I go down and die? The three voices the
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: waves have a story to tell me as I lie
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: on the lonely beach, chanting aloft in the pine tops.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: The wind has a lesson to teach. But the stars
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: sing an anthem of glory I cannot put into speech.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: The waves tell of ocean spaces, of hearts that are
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: wild and brave, of popular city places, of desolate shores.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: They lave, of men who sally in quest of gold,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: to sink in an ocean grave. The wind is a
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: mighty roama. He bids me keep me free, clean from
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: the taint of the gold lust, hardy and pure, as
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: he cling with my love to nature as a child
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: to the mother knee. But the stars throng out in
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: their glory, and they sing of the god in man.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: They sing of the mighty Master of the loom. His
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: fingers span where a star or a soul is a
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: part of the whole, and weft in the wondrous plan
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: here by the campfire's flicker. Deep in my blanket, curled,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: I long for the peace of the pine gloom, when
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: the scroll of the Lord is unfurled, and the wind
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: and the wave are silent, and world is singing to world.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: End of part two, Part three of Songs of a
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Sour Dough by Robert W. Servis. This liveryvox recording is
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: in the public domain. The pines, the harpi, the lure
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: of little voices, the song of the wage slave grin
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: the pines, we sleep in the sleep of ages, the
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: bleak barbarian pines. The gray moss drapes us like sages,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: and closer we lock our lines, and deeper we clutch
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: through the jellied gloom, where never a sunbeam shines. On
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: the flanks of the storm gored ridges are our black
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: battalions massed. We surge in a host to the sullen coast,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: and we sing in the ocean blast from Empire of
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: sea to Empire of snow. We grip our empire fast
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: to the niggard lands, where we driven TwixT desert and
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: fower we penned to us. Was the northland given ours
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: to stronghold, and defend ours till the world be riven.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: In the crash of the utter end. Ours from the
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: bleak beginning, through the eons of deathlike sleep, Ours, from
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: the shock when the naked rock was hurled, from the
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: hissing deep Ours, through the twilight ages of weary glacier creep,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: wind of the east, wind of the West, wandering to
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: and fro chant your songs in our topmost boughs, that
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: the sons of men may know. The peerless pine was
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: the first to come, and the pine will be last
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: to go. We pillar the halls of perfumed gloom. We
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: plume where the eagles soar, the north wind swoops from
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: the brooding pole, and our ancients crash and roar. But
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: where one falls from the crumbling walls shoots up a
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: hardy score. We spring from the gloom of the canyon's
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: womb in the valley's lap. We lie from the white
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: foam fringe where the breakers cringe, to the peaks that
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: tusk the sky. We climb and we peer in the
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: crag locked mere that gleams like a golden eye. Gain
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: to the verge of the hog back ridge, where the
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: vision ranges free pines and pines, and the shadow of pines,
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: as far as the eye can see, a steadfast legion
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: of stalwart knights in dominant empery. Sun and moon and
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: stars give answer. Shall we not staunchly stand even as
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: now forever wards of the wilder strand, sentinels of the stillness,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: lords of the last lone land, the harpy. There was
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: a woman, and she was wise, woefully wise was she.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: She was old, so old, yet her years, all told,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: were but a score and three. And she knew by
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: heart and finish to start the book of iniquity. There
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: is no hope for such as I on earth, nor
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: yet in heaven. Unloved I live, unloved, I die, unpitied, unforgiven,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: he loathed jade. I ply my trade, unhallowed and unshriven.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: I paint my cheeks, for they are white and cheeks
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: of chalk. Men hate mine eyes with wine I make
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: to shine that men may seek and sate with overhead
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: a lamp of red. I sit me down and wait
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: until they come, the knightly scum with drunken eyes of flame,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: Your sweetheart's sons, ye scornful ones, tis I who know
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: their shame the gods, ye see, are brutes to me.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: And so I play my game. For life is not
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: the thing we thought, and not the thing we plan.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: And woman in a bitter world must do the best
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: she can. Must yield the stroke and bear the yoke,
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: and serve the will of man, must serve his need,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: and ever feed the flame of his desire. Though be
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: she loved for love alone, or be she loved higher
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: for every man since life began is tainted with the mire.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: And though you know he love you so and set
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: you on love's throne, you let your eyes but mock
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: his sighs, and let your hearts be stown lest you
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: be left as I was left, a tainted and alone
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: from love's close kiss to hell's abyss is one sheer flight.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: I trow and wedding ring and bridle bell a will
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: o' wisps of woe, And tis not wise to love
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: too well, And this all women know. Wherefore the wolf pack,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: having gorged upon the lamb their prey, with siren smile
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: and serpent guile, I make the wolf pack pay with
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: velvet paws and flensing claws. A tigress roused to slay
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: one who in youth sought truest truth and found a
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: devil's lies, a symbol of the sin of man, a
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: human sacrifice. Yet shall I blame on man the shame?
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Could he be otherwise? Was I not born to walk
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: in scorn? Where others walk in pride? The maker marred
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: and evil starred. I drift upon his tide, and he
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: alone shall judge his own. So I his judgment bide.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Fate has written a tragedy. Its name is the Human Heart.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: The theater is the house of life. Woman the mummer's part.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: The devil enters the prompter's box, and the play is
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: ready to start. The lure of little voices, there's a
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: cry from out the loneliness. Oh listen, honey, listen. Do
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: you hear it? Do you fear it? You're a holding
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: of me? So you're a sobbing in your sleep, dear,
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: and your lashes, how they glisten? Do you hear the
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: little voices? All a begging me to go, all a
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: begging me to leave you. Day and night they're pleading,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: praying on the north wind, on the west wind, from
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: the peak of from the plain, night and day. They
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: never leave me. Do you know what they are saying?
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: He was ours before you got him, and we want
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: him once again. Yes, they're wanting me. They're haunting me,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: the awful, lonely places. They're whining, and they're whimpering, as
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: if each had a soul. They're calling from the wilderness,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: the vast and god like spaces, the stark and sullen solitudes,
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: that sentinel, the pole. They miss my little campfires, ever brightly, bravely,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: gleaming in the womb of desolation, where was never man before,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: as comradeless. I sought them, lion hearted, loving, dreaming, and
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: they hailed me as a comrade, and they loved me evermore.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: And now they're all a crying, and it's no use
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: me denying. The spell of them is on me, and
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: I'm helpless as a child. My heart is aching, aching,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: but I hear them sleeping, waking. It's the lure of
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: little voices. It's the mandate of the wild. I'm afraid
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: to tell you, honey, I can take no bit of leaving,
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: but softly in the sleep time from your love I'll
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: steal away. Oh it's cruel, dearie, cruel, and it's God
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: knows how I'm grieving, But his loneliness is calling, and
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: he knows I must obey the song of the wage slave.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: When the long, long day is over and the big
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: boss gives me my pay, I hope that it won't
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: be hell fire, as some of the parsons say, And
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: I hope that it won't be heaven with some of
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: the parsons I've met. All I want is just quiet,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: just to rest and forget. Look at my face, toil furrowed,
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: look at my calloused hands. Master, I've done thy bidding,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: wrought in thy many lands, wrought for the little masters,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: big bellied they be, and rich. I've done their desire
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: for a daily hire. And I die like a dog
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: in a ditch. I have used the strength thou hast given.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Thou knowest I did not shirk threescore years of labor.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Thine be the long day's work. And now, big Master,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: I'm broken and bent and twisted and scarred. But I've
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: held my job, and thou knowest thou wilt not judge
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: me hard. Thou knowest my sins are many, and often
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: I've played the fool. Whiskey and cards and women. They
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: made me the devil's tool. I was just like a
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: child with money, I flung it away with a curse,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: feasting a fawning parasite, or glutting a harlot's purse. Then
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: back to the woods, repentance, back to the mill or
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: the mine. I the worker of workers, everything in my line,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: everything hard but headwork. Had no more brains than a kid,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: A brute with brute stress to labor, doing as I
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: was bid, living in camps with men folk, a lonely
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: and loveless life. Never knew kiss of sweetheart, never caress
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: of wife, her brute with brute strength to labor, and
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: they were so far above. Yet I'd gladly have gone
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: to the gallows for one little look of love. I
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: with the strength of two men, savage and shy and wild.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: Yet how I'd had treasured a woman and the sweet,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: warm kiss of a child. Well tis thy world, and
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: thou knowest I blaspheme and my ways be rude. But
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: I've lived my life as I've found it, and I've
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: done my best to be good. I the primitive toiler,
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: half naked and grimed to the eyes, sweating it deep
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: in their ditches, swining it stark in their styes, hauling
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: down forests, before me, spanning tumultuous streams, down in the ditch,
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: building o'er me palaces fairer than dreams, boring the rock
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: to the ore bed, driving the road through the fen, Resolute, dumb,
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: uncomplaining a man in a world of men. Master, I've
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: filled my contract, wrought in thy many lands. Not by
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: my sins, wilt thou judge me, but by the work
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: of my hands. Master, I've done thy bidding. And the
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: light is low in the west, and the long long
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: shift is over, Master, I've earned it. Rest Grin. If
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: you're up against a bruiser and you're getting knocked about, Grin.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: If you're feeling pretty groggy and you're licked beyond a doubt, Grin,
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: don't let him see your funking. Let him know with
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: every clout, though your face is battered to a pulp,
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: your blooming heart stout, just stand upon your pins until
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: the beggar knocks you out, and grin. This life's a
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: bally battle, and the same advice holds true of Grin.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: If you're up against it badly, then it's only one
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: on you. So Grin. If the future's black as thunder,
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: don't let people see you're blue. Just cultivate a cast
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: iron smile of joy the whole day through. If they
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: call you little Sunshine, wish that they'd no troubles too.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: You may grin rise up in the morning with the
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: will that's smooth or rough. You'll grin sink to sleep
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: at midnight. And although you're feeling tough yet grin. There's
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: nothing gained by whining. And you're not that kind of stuff.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: You're a fighter from away back, and you won't take
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: a rebuff. Your trouble is you don't know when you've
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: had enough. Don't give in. If fate should down, you
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: just get up and take another cuff. You may bank
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: on it that there is no philosophy like bluff and grin.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: End of Part three, Part four of Songs of a
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: Sour Dough by Robert W. Servis. This Liberyvox recording is
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: in the public domain. The shooting of Dan McGrew. A
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: Malamute saloon. The kid that handles the music box was
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: hitting a jag time tune back of the bar in
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: a solo game. Sat dangerous Dan mcgroo and watching his
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: luck was his lighter love. The lady that's known as
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: Lou went out of the night, which was fifty below,
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: and into the din and the glare. There stumbled a
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: minor fresh from the CS, dog, dirty and loaded for bear.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: He looked like a man with a foot in the grave,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: and scarcely the strength of a louse. Yet he tilted
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: a poker dust on the bar, and he called for
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: drinks for the house. There was none could place the
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: stranger's face, though we searched ourselves for a clue. But
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: we drank his health, and the last to drink was
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: dangerous Dan magrew. There's men that somehow just grip your
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: eyes and hold them hard like a spell. As such
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: was he, and he looked to me like a man
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: who had lived in hell, with a face most hair
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: and the dreary stare of a dog whose day is done.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: As he watered the green stuff in his glass, and
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: the drops fell one by one. Then I got to
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: figure in who he was, and wondering what he'd do.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: And I turned my head and there watching him was
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: the lady that's known as Low. His eyes went rubbering
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: round the room, and he seemed in a kind of daze.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Till at last that old piano fell in the way
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: of his wandering gaze. The ragtime kid was having a drink.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: There was no one else on the stool, So the
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: stranger stumbles across the room and flops down there like
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: a fool in a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: He sat, and I saw him sway. Then he clutched
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: the keys with his talon hands. My god, but that
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: man could play. Were you ever out in the great alone,
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: when the moon was awful clear, and the icy mountains
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: with only the howl of a timber wolf, And you
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: camped there in the cold, a half dead thing in
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold,
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: with high overhead, green, yellow and red, the north light
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: swept in bars. Then you've a haunch. What the music meant,
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: hunger and night and the stars, And hunger not of
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: the belly kind as vanished with bacon and beans, but
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: the gnawing hunger of lonely men for a home and
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: all that it means, for a fireside far from the
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: cares that are four walls and a roof above. But
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: oh so cramful of cozy joy, and crowned with a
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: woman's love, a woman dearer than all the world, and
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: true as Heaven is true. God, how ghastly she looks
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: through her rouge, the lady that's known as Lou. Then
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: on a sudden, the music changed, so soft that you
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: scarce could hear. But you felt that your life had
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: been looted clean of all that it once held. Dear,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: that someone had stolen the woman you loved, that her
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: love was a devil's lie, that your guts were gone,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: and the best for you was to crawl away and die.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: Twas the crowning cry of a heart's despair, and it
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: thrilled you through and through. I guess I'll make it
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: a spread mess, air, said, dangerous dammagrew The music almost
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: eyed away. Then it burst like a pent up flood,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: and it seemed to say repay, repay, And my eyes
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: were blind with blood. The thought came back of an
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: ancient wrong, and it stung like a frozen lash, and
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: the lust awoke to kill, to kill, And the music
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: stopped with a crash, and the stranger turned and his
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: eyes they burned in a most peculiar way. In a
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt. He sat and
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: I saw him sway. Then his lips went in in
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: a kind of grin, and he spoke, and his voice
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: was calm, and boys says he. You don't know me,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: and none of you care a damn, But I want
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: to state, and my words are straight, and I'll bet
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: my poke they're true, that one of you is a
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: hound of hell, and that one is damnmgrew. Then I
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: duck my head, and the lights went out, and two
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: guns blazed in the dark and screamed, and the lights
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: went up, and two men lay stiff and stark pitched
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: on his head and pumped full of lead with dangerous dammagrew,
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: while the man from the creeks lay clutched to the
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: breast of the lady that's known as Lou. These are
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: the simple facts of the case, and I guess I
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: ought to know. They say that the stranger was crazed
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: with hooch, and I'm not denying it, so I'm not
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: so wise as the lawyer guys. But strictly between us two,
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: the woman that kissed him and pinched his poke was
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: the lady that's known as Lou. End of part four,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: Part five of Songs of a Sour Dough by Robert W. Servis.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: This libriyvox recording is in the public domain. The Cremation
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: of Sam Macgee. There are strange things done in the
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: midnight sun by the men who moil for gold. The
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: Arctic trails have their secret tails that would make your
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: blood run cold. The Northern lights have seen queer sights,
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: But the queerest they ever did see was that night
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: on the marge of Lake Lebarge, I cremated Sam Maghee,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: now Saint Margee. Was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: and blows. Why he left his home in the south
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: to roam round the pole, God only knows. He was
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: always cold, but the land of Gold seemed to hold
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: him like a spell, though he'd often say in his
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: homely way that he'd sooner live in hell. On a
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: Christmas Day, we were mushing our way over the Dawson Trail,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: talk of your cold through the parker's fold. It stabbed
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: like a driven nail. If our eyes would close, then
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see. It wasn't
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam Marghee.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: And that very night, as we lay packed tight in
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: our robes beneath the snow, and the dogs were fed,
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: and the stars of her head were dancing heel and toe,
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: he turned to me and Cap says, he I'll cash
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: in this trip, I guess, and if I do, I'm
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: asking that you won't refuse my last request. Well, he
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: seems so low that I couldn't say no. Then he says,
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: with a sort of moan, it's the curse of cold,
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: to the bone, yet tain't being dead. It's my awful
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: dread of the icy grave that pains. So I want
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: you to swear that foul or fair your cremate my
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: last remains. A pal's last need is a thing to heed.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: So I swore I would not fail. And we started
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: on at the streak of dawn. But God, he looked
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: ghastly pale. He crouched on the sleigh and he raved
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: all day of his home in Tennessee, and before nightfall
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: the corpse was all that was left of Sam Magee.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: There wasn't a breath in that land of death. And
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: I hurried, horror, driven with a corpse half hid that
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: I couldn't get rid because of a promise given. It
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say,
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: you may tax your brawn and brains, but you promise true,
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: and it's up to you to cremate those last remains. Now,
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: has its own stern code. In the days to come,
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: though my lips were dumb in my heart, how I
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: cursed that load in the long long night by the
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: lone firelight, while the huskies round in a ring howled
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: out their woes to the homeless snows. O God, how
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: I loathed the thing. And every day that quiet clays
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: seemed to heavier and heavier grow, And on I went,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: I swore I would not give in, and I'd often
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: grin till I came to the march of Lake Lebarge,
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: and a derelict there lay. It was jammed in the ice,
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: but I saw in a trice it was called the
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: alice may and I looked at it, and I thought
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: a bit, and I looked at my frozen charm. Then
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: here said I, with a sudden cry, is my cream attareum?
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: lit the boiler fire some coal I found that was
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher. The flames
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: just soared, and the furnace roared, such a blaze you
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: seldom see. And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal,
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: and I stuffed in sam magee. Then I made a hike,
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: for I didn't like to hear him sizzle. So and
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: began to blow. It was icy cold, but the hot
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: sweat rolled down my cheeks and I don't know why.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: down the sky. I do not know how long in
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: the snow, I wrestled with grisly fear. But the stars
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: came out and they danced about ere again. I ventured near.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: I was sick with dread, but I bravely said, I'll
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: just take a peep inside. I guess he's cooked and
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: it's time. I looked. Then the door I opened wide,
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: and there sat Sam, looking cool and calm in the
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: hearts of the furnace, roar, and he wore a smile
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: you could see a mile and he said, please close
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: that door. It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: Lead in the cold and storm. Since I left Plum
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: Tree down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: There are strange things done in the midnight sun by
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: the men who moil for gold. The Arctic trails have
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: their secret tales that would make your blood run cold.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: The Northern lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: they ever did see was that night on the march
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: of Lake Lebarge, I cremated Sam macghee. End of Part five,
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: Part six of Songs of a Sour Dough by Robert W. Servis.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: This libryvox recording is in the public domain. My Madonna unforgotten,
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: the reckoning quatrains, the men that don't fit in music,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: and the bush the rhyme of the remittance man. My Madonna.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: I hailed me a woman from the street, shameless but
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: oh so fair. I bade her sit in the model seat,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: and I painted her sitting there, I hid all trace
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: of her heart unclean. I painted a babe at her breast.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: I painted her as she might have been, if the
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: worst had been. The best laughed at my picture and
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: went away. Then came with a knowing nod, a connoisseur,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: and I heard him say, tis Mary, the Mother of God.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: So I painted a halo round her hair. And I
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: sold her and took my fee, And she hangs in
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: the church of Saint Hilaire, where you and all may see, unforgotten.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: I know a garden where the lilies gleam, and one
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: who lingers in the sunshine. There she is than white
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: stoled lily, far more fair, and o'er her eyes a
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: heaven lit with dream. I know a garret, cold and
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: dark and drear, and one who toils and toils with
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: tireless pen until his brave, sad eyes grow weary. Then
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: he seeks the stars, pale silent as a seer. And ah,
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: it's strange, for desolate and dim. Between these two there
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: rolls an ocean wide. Yet he is in the garden
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: by her side, and she is in the garret. There
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: with him, the reckoning. It's fine to have a blowout
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: in a fancy restaurant with terrapin and canvas back and
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: all the wine you want to enjoy, the flowers and music,
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: watch the pretty women pass, smoke a choice cigar, and
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: sip the wealthy water in your glass. It's bully in
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: a high toned joint to eat and drink your fill.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: But it's quite another matter when you pay the bill.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: It's great to go out every night on fun or pleasure,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: bent to wear your glad rags always, and to never
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: save a cent, to drift along regardless, have a good
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: time every trip, to hit the high spots sometimes, and
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: to let your chances slip, to know you're acting foolish,
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: yet to go on fooling still till nature calls a
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: showdown and you pay the bill. Time has got a
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: little bill, get wise, while yet you may for the
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: debit side's increasing in a most alarming way. The things
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: you had no right to do, the things you should
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: have done, they're all put down. It's up to you
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: to pay for everyone. So eat, drink and be merry,
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: have a good time if you will. But God help
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: you when the time comes and you foot the bill. Quatrains.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: One said, thy life is thine to make or mar
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: to flicker feebly, or to soar a star. It lies
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: with thee. The choice is thine, is thine to hit
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: the ties or drive thy auto car? I answered her,
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: The choice is mine. Ah. No, we all were made
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: or marred long long ago. The parts are written. Hear
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: the super wail, who is stage managing this cosmic show?
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: Blind fools of and slaves of circumstance? Life is a fiddler,
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: and we all must dance from gloom where mocks that
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: will o wisp free will? I heard a voice cry, say,
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: give us a chance. Chance, Oh, there is no chance.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: The scene is set up with the curtain man. The
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: marionette resumes his part. The gods will work the wires.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: They've got it all down. Fine, you bet, you bet,
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: it's all decreed. The mighty earthquake, crash, the countless constellations
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: wheel and flash, the rise and fall of empires, War's
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: red tide, the composition of your dinner hash. There's no
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: haphazard in this world of ours, cause and effect, A
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: grim relentless powers. They rule the world. The king was
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: shot last night. Last night I held the joker and
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: both bowers. From out the mesh of fate. Our heads
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: we thrust. We can't do what we would, but what
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: we must. Heredity has got us in a cinch consoling thought.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: When you've been out on a bust, hark to the
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: song where spheral voices blend. There's no beginning, never will
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: be end. It makes us nutty. Hang the astral chimes,
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: the table's spread. Come, let us dine, my friend. The
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: men that don't fit in. There's a race of men
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: that don't fit in, a race that can't stay still.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: So they break the hearts of kith and kin, and
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: they roam the world at will. They range the field,
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: and they rove the flood, and they climb the mountain's crest.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: Theirs is the curse of the gipsy blood, and they
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: don't know how to rest. If they just went straight,
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: they might go far. They're strong and brave and true,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: but they're always tired of the things that are, and
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: they want the strainnew. They say, could I find my
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: proper groove? What a deep mark I would make? So
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: they chop and change, and each fresh move is only
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: a fresh mistake, and each forgets as he strips and
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: runs with a brilliant, fitful pace. It's the steady, quiet,
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: plodding ones who win in the lifelong race, And each
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: forgets that his youth has fled, forgets that his prime
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: is past, till he stands one day with a hope
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: that's dead in the glare of the truth. At last
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: he has failed. He has failed, He has missed his chance.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: He has just done things by half. Life's been a
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: jolly good joke on him, and now is the time
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: to laugh. Ha ha. He's one of the legion lost.
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: He was never meant to win. He's a rolling stone,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: and it's bred in the bone. He's a man who
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: won't fit in music. In the bush o'er the dark pines,
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: she sees the silver moon, and in the west, all
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: tremulous a star and soothing sweet. She hears the mellow tune.
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: Her cow bells jangled in the fields afar, quite listless.
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: For her daily stent is done. She stands sad exile
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: at her rose wreathed door and sends her love eternal
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: with the sun that goes to gild the land. She'll
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: see no more. The grave gaunt pines imprison her sad gaze,
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: all still the sky and darkling drearily, she feels the
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: chilly breath of dear dead days come sifting through the
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: alders eerily. Oh, how the roses riot in their bloom,
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: the curtains stir as with an ancient pain. Her old
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: piano gleams from out the gloom and waits and waits,
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: her tender to much in vain. But now her hands,
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: like moonlight, brush the keys with velvet grace, melodious delight.
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: And now a sad refrain from overseas goes sobbing on
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: the bosom of the night. And now she sings, oh,
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: singer in the gloom, voicing a sorrow we can ne'er
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: express here in the farness, where we few have room,
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: unashamed to show our love and tenderness. Our hearts will
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: echo till they beat no more, that song of sadness
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: and of motherland, and stretched in deathless love to England's shore.
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: Some day she'll hearken, and she'll understand a prima donna
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: in the shining past. But now a mother, growing old
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: and gray, she thinks of how she held a people
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: fast in thrall and gleaned the triumphs of a day
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: She sees a sea of faces like a dream. She
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: sees herself a queen of song. Once more, she sees
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: lips part in rapture, eyes agleam. She sings as never
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: once she sang before. She sings, a wild, sweet song
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: that throbs with pain, the added pain of life that
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: transcends art, A song of home, a deep celestial strain,
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: the glorious swan song of a dying heart. A lame
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: tramp comes along the railway track, a grizzled dog whose
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: day is nearly done. He passes, pauses, then comes slowly
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: back and listens. There an audience of one, she sings.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: Her golden voice is passion fraught, as when she charmed
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: a thousand eager ears. He listens, trembling, and she knows
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: it not, And down his hollow cheeks roll bitter tears.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: She ceases and is still, as if to p There
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: is no sound. The stars are all alight. Only a
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: wretch who stumbles on his way, Only a vagrant sobbing
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: in the night, the rhyme of the remittance man. There's
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: a four pronged buck, a swinging in the shadow of
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: my cabin, And it roamed the velvet valley till to day.
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: But I tracked it by the river, and I trailed
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: it in the cover, and I killed it on the
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: mountain miles away. Now I've had my lazy supper, and
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: the level sun is gleaming on the water where the
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: silver salmon play, and I light my little corn cob,
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: and I linger softly, dreaming in the twilight of a
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: land that's far away, far away, so faint and far
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: is flaming London, fevered Paris, that I fancy I have
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: gained another star, far away the din, and hurry far
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: away the sin and worry, far away. God knows they
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: cannot be too far. Gilded galley slaves of mammon, how
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: my purse proud brothers taunt me. I might have been
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: as well to do as they had. I clutched like
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: them my chances, learned their wisdom, crushed my fancies, starved
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: my soul, and gone to business every day. Well, the
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: cherry bends with blossom, and the vivid grass is springing,
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: and the star like lily nestles in the green, and
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: the frogs their joys are singing, and my heart in
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: tune is ringing, And it doesn't matter what I might
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: have been while above the scented pine gloom, piling heights
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: of golden glory, the sun god paints his canvas. In
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: the west, I can couch me deep in clover. I
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: can listen to the story of the lazy lapping water.
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: It is best while the trout leaps in the river,
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: and the blue grouse thrills the cover, and the frozen
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: snow betrays the panther's track, and the robin greets the
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: dayspring with the rapture of a lover. I am happy,
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: and I'll never more go back, for I know I'd
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: just be longing for the little old log cabin, with
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: the morning glory clinging to the door. Till I loathed
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: the city places, cursed the care on all the faces,
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: turned my back on Lazarlander evermore so, Send me far
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: from Lombard Street, and write me down a failure. Put
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: a little in my purse, and leave me free. Say
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: he turned from fortune's offering to follow up a pale yow.
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: He is one of us. No longer let him be.
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: I'm one of you, no longer. By the trails my
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: feet have broken, the dizzy peaks I've scaled, the camp
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: fires glow by the lonely seas I've sailed in Yes, yea,
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: the final word is spoken. I am signed and sealed
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: to nature. Be it so. End of Part six, Part
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: seven of Songs of a Sour Dough by Robert W.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: Servis this liveryvox recording is in the public domain. The
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: low Down White, the Little Lord, log Cabin, the Younger Son,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: the March of the Dead, fighting Mac, the Woman and
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: the Angel, the low Down White. This is the payday
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: up at the mines, when the bearded brutes come down.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: There's money to burn in the streets tonight. So I've
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: sent my cloches to town with a haggard face and
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: a ribbon of red entwined in her hair of brown.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: And I know at the dawn she'll come reeling home
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: with the bottles one, two, three, one for herself to
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: drown her shame, and two big bottles for me to
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: make me forget the thing I am, and the man
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: I used to be, To make me forget the brand
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: of the dog. As I crouch in this hideous place,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: to make me forget. Once I kindled the light of
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: love in a lady's face, where even the squalid syewash
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: now holds me a black disgrace. Oh, I've guarded my
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: secret well, And who would dream? As I speak in
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: a tribal tongue like a rogue unhung mid the ranch house,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: filth and reek. I could roll to bed with a
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: Latin phrase and rise with a verse of Greek. Yet
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: I was a senior prizeman once, and the pride of
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: a college eight called to the bar. My friends were true,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: but they could not keep me straight. Then came the divorce,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: and I went abroad and died on the river plate.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: But I'm not dead yet, though with half a lung
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: there isn't time to spare. And I hope that the
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: year will see me out. And thank God, no one
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: will care, save maybe the little slim, sidewashed girl with
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: the rose of shame in her hair. She will come
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: with the dawn. And the dawn is near. I can
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: see its evil glow, like a corpse light seen through
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: a frosty pane in a night of want and woe
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: and yonder. She comes by the bleak bull pines, swift
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: staggering through the snow, the little old log cabin. When
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: a man gets on his uppers in a hard pan
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: sort a town, and he ain't got nothing coming, and
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: he can't afford to eat, and he's in a fix
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: for lodging, and he wanders up and down, and you'd
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: fancy he had been boozing. He's so locoed about the
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: feet when he's feeling sneaking sorry, and his belt is
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: hanging slack, and his face is peaked and gray like,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: and his heart gets down and winds, and he's had
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: to get to thinking and a wishing he was back
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: in the little old log cabin in the shadow of
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: the pines. And when he's on the blazing desert and
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: his canteens sprung a leak, and he's all alone and crazy,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: and he's crawling like a snail, and his tongue so
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: black and swollen that it hurts him for to speak,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: and he gouges down for water, and the raven's on
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: his trail. When he's done with care and cursing, and
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: he feels more like to cry, and he sees old
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: death a grinning, and he thinks upon his crimes. Then
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: he's like to have a vision as he settles down
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: to die, of the little old log cabin and the
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: roses and the vines, Oh, the little old log cabin.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: It's a solemn shining mark when a feller gets to
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: sinning and a going to the wall, and folks don't
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: understand him, and he's groping in the dark, and he's
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: sick of being cursed at and he's longing for his call.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: When the son of life's a sinking, he can see
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: it way above on the hill, from out the shadow,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: in a glory gin the sky, and your mother's voice
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: is calling, and her arms are stretched in love. And
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: somehow you're glad you're going, and you ain't as scared
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: to die, when you'll be like a kid again and
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: nestle to her breast and never leave it. Shelter and forget,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: and love and rest the younger son. If you leave
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: the gloom of London and you seek a glowing land
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: where all except the flag is strange and new, there's
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: a bronzed and stalwart fellow who will grip you by
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: the hand and greet you with a welcome, warm and true.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: For he's your younger brother, the one you sent away
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: because there wasn't room for him at home. And now
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: he's quite contented, and he's glad he didn't stay, and
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: he's building Britain's greatness or the foam. When the giant
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: heard moving at the rising of the sun, and the
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: prairie is lit with rose and gold, and the camp
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: is all a bustle, and the busy day's begun. He
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: leaps into the saddle, sure and bold, through the round
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: of heat and hurry. He rattles at a pace that
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: nothing mars. And when the night winds whisper and camp
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: fires flicker out, he's sleeping like a child beneath the stars.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: When the wattle blooms are drooping in the somber shed
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: oak glade, and the breathless land is lying in a swoon.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: He leaves his work a moment, leaning slightly on his spade,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: and he hears the bell bird chime. The austral noon,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: the parakeets are silent in the gum tree by the creek.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: The ferny grove is sunshine steeped and still for the
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: dew will gem the myrtle. In the twilight air. He
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: seek his little lonely cabin on the hill around the
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: purple vine clad slope the Argent River dreams. The row
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: uses almost hide the house from view. A snow peak
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: of the winterberg in crimson splendor gleams, the shadow deepens
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: down on the karoo. He seeks the lily scented dusk
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: beneath the orange tree. His pipe in silence glows and
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: fades and glows. And then two little maids come out
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: and climb upon his knee, and one is like the lily,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: one the rose. He sees his white sheep dapple o'er
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: the green New Zealand Plain and where Vancouver's shaggy ramparts
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: frown when the sunlight threads the pine gloom. He is
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: fighting might and main to clinch the rivets of an
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: empire down. You will find him toiling, toiling in the
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: south or in the west, a child of nature, fearless,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: frank and free. And the warmest heart that beats for
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: you is beating in his breast, and he sends you
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: loyal greeting o'er the sea. You've a brother in the army,
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: You've another in the church. One of you is a
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: diplomatic swell. You've had the pick of everything and left
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: him in the lurch. And yet I think he's doing
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: very well. I'm sure his life is happy, and he
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: doesn't envy yours. I know he loves the land as
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: pluck as one, and I fancy in the years unborn,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: when England's fame endures, she will come to bless with
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: pride the youngest son. The March of the Dead, the
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: cruel war was over. Oh, the triumph was so sweet.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: We watched the troops returning through our tears. There was triumph, triumph,
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: triumph down the scarlet, glittering street, and you scarce could
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: hear the music for the cheers, and you scarce could
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: see the housetops for the flags that flew between. The
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: bells were pealing madly to the sky, and everyone was
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: shouting for the soul of the queen, and the glory
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: of an age was passing by. And then there came
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: a shadow, swift and sudden, dark and drear. The bells
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: were silent, not an echo stirred. The flags were drooping sullenly.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: The men forgot to cheer. We waited, and we never
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: spoke a word. The sky grew darker, darker, till from
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: out the gloomy rack there came a voice that checked
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: the heart with dread. Tear down, tear down, you're bunting now,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: and hang up sable, black they're coming. It's the army
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: of the dead. They were coming. They were coming, gaunt
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: and ghastly, sad and slow. They were coming, all the
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: crimson wrecks of pride, with faces seared and cheeks red smeared,
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: and haunting eyes of woe and clotted holes. The harkee
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: couldn't hide o the clammy brow of anguish, the livid
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: foam flecked lips, the reeling ranks of ruins swept along
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: the limb that trailed, the hand that failed, the bloody
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: finger tips, and oh, the dreary rhythm of their song.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: They left us on the felt side, but we felt
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: we couldn't stop on this our England's crowning festal day.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: We're the men of Magus fontaine Wire, the men of
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: spying cop Colenso with the men who had to pay,
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: with the men who paid the blood price. Shall the
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: grave be all our gain? You owe us long and
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: heavy as the score. Then cheer us for our glory now,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: and cheer us for our pain, and cheerers as she
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: never cheered before. The folks were white and stricken, and
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: each tongue seemed weighed with lead. Each heart was clutched
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: in hollow hand of ice, and every eye was staring
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: at the horror of the dead, the pity of the
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: men who paid the price. They were come, were come
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: to mock us in the first flush of our peace,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: through writhing lips. Their teeth were all agleam. They were
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: coming in their thousands. Oh, would they never cease? I
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: closed my eyes, and then it was a dream. There
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: was triumph, triumph, triumph down the scarlet, gleaming street. The
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: town was mad, A man was like a boy. A
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: thousand flags were flaming where the sky and city meet,
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: A thousand bells were thundering the joy. There was music, mirth,
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: and sunshine. But some eyes shone with regret. And while
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: we stunned with cheers our homing braves, O, God, in
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: thy great mercy, let us never more forget the graves
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: they left behind, the bitter graves fighting mac a life tragedy,
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: A pistol shot rings round and round the world in
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: pitiful defeat. A warrior lies, a last defiance to dark
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: death is hurled, A last wild challenge shocks the sunlit skies. Alone,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: he falls with wide wan woeful eyes, eyes that could
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: smile at death, could not face shame alone, alone He
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: paced his narrow room in the bright sunshine of that
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: Paris day, saw in his thought the awful hand of doom,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: saw in his dream his glory pass away. Tried in
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: his heart, his weary heart to pray, O, God who
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: made me, give me strength to face the specter of
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: this bitter black disgrace. The burn brawls darkly down the
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: shaggy glen. The bee kissed heather blooms around the door.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: He sees himself for barefoot boy again, bending o'er page
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: of legendary lore. He hears the peabroch grips the red
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: clay More runs with the fiery cross, a clansman, true
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: sworn kinsman of rob Roy and Roderick Do, eating his
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: heart out with a wild desire. One day behind his
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: counter trim and neat, he hears a sound that sets
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: his brain a fire. The Islanders are marching down the street.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: Oh how the pipe shrill out, the mad drums beat
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: onto the gates of hell. My Gordon's gay. He flings
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: his hated yardstick far away. He sees the sullen pass,
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: high crowned with snow, where Afghans cower with eyes of
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: gleaming hate. He hurls himself against the hidden foe. They
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: try to rally. Ah too late, too late, again defenseless
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: with fierce eyes that wait for death, he stands like
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: baited bull at bay and flouts the boors that mad
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: Majuba day. He sees again the murderers, Soudan, blood slaked
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: and rapine swept. He seems to stand upon the glory
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: plain of under Man, then Magus Fontaine and supreme command
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: over his highlanders to shake his hand. A king is proud,
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: and princes call him friend, and glory crowns his life.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: And now the end, the awful end. His eyes are
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: dark with doom. He hears the shrapnel shrieking overhead. He
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: sees the ravaged ranks, the flame stabbed gloom. Oh to
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: have fallen, the battlefield, his bed with Wacho and his
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: glorious brother dead. Why was he saved for this? For this?
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: And now? He raises the revolver to his brow. In
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: many a highland home, framed with rude art, you'll find
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: his portrait, rough hewn, stern and square. It's graven in
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: the Fuyam Feller's heart. The Gurkha reads it as his
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: evening prayer. The raw lands know it. Where the fierce
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: sun's glare the dervish fears it. Honor to his name,
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: who holds aloft the shield of England's fame. Mourn for
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: our hero, men of northern race. We do not know
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: his sin. We only know his sword was keen. He
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: laughed death in the face and struck, for Empire's sake
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: a giant blow. His arm was strong. Ah Well, they
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: learnt the foe. The echo of his deeds is ringing.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: Yet we'll ring for aye all else, let us f
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: get the woman and the Angel. An angel was tired
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: of Heaven as he lounged in the Golden street. His
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: halo was tilted sideways, and his harp lay mute at
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: his feet. So the Master stooped in his pity and
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: gave him a pass to go for the space of
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: a moon to the earth world, to mix with the
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: men below. He doffed his celestial garments scarce, waiting to
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: lay them straight. He bade goodbye to Peter, who stood
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: by the golden gate. The sexless singers of Heaven chanted
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: a fond farewell, and the imps looked up as they
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: pattered on the red hot flags of Hell. Never was
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: seen such an angel. Eyes of a heavenly blue, features
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: that shamed Apollo, hair of a golden hue. The women
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: simply adored him. His lips were like Cupid's bow, but
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: he never ventured to use them, and so they voted
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: him slow till at last there came one woman, a
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: marvel of loveliness, and she whispered to him, do you
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: love me? And he answered that woman yes, And she said,
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: put your arms around me and kiss me and hold
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: me so but fiercely he drew back, saying this thing
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: is wrong, and I know. Then sweetly she mocked his scruples,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: and softly she him beguiled. You, who are verily man
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: among men, speak with the tongue of a child. We've
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: outlived the old standards. We have burst like an overtight thong,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: the ancient, outworn pure Titanic traditions of right and wrong.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: Then the Master feared for his angel and called him
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: again to his side, for oh the woman was wondrous,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: and oh the angel was tried, and deep in his
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: hell sang the devil. And this was the strain of
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: his song. The ancient, outworn, pure Titanic traditions of right
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: and wrong end of Part seven, Part eight of Songs
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: of the Sour Dough by Robert W. Servis. This livery
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: vox recording is in the public domain. The rhyme of
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: the restless ones New Year's Eve, comfort, premonition, the tramps
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: lo'n vois, the rhyme of the restless ones. We couldn't
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: sit and study for the law, the stagnation of a bank.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: We couldn't stand for our riot blood was surging, and
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: we didn't need much urging to excitements and excesses that
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: are banned. So we took to wine and drink and
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: other things. And the devil in us struggled to be free,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: till our friends rose up in wrath, and they pointed
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: out the path, and they paid our debts and packed
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: us o'er the sea. Oh, they shook us off and
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: shipped us o'er the foam to the larger lands that
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: lure a man to roam. And we took the chance
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: they gave of a far and foreign grave, and we
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: bade good bye for evermore to home. And some of
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: us are climbing on the peak, and some of us
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: are camping on the plain by pine and palm, you'll
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: find us. We never claim to bind us. By track
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: and trail, you'll meet us once again. We have fated
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: serfs to freedom sky and sea. We have failed where
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: slummy cities overflow. But the stranger ways of Earth know
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: our pride and know our worth. And we go into
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: the dark as fighters go. Yes, we go into the
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: night as brave men go. Though our faces they be
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: often streaked with woe. Yet we're hard as cats to kill,
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: and our hearts are reckless still, and we've danced with
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: death a dozen times or so. And you'll find us
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: in Alaska after gold, and you'll find us herding cattle
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: in the South. We like strong drink and fun. And
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: when the races run, we often die with curses in
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: our mouth. We are wild as colts, unbroke, but never
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: mean of our sins. We shoulders broad to bear the blame.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: But we'll never stay in town, and we'll never settle down,
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: and we'll never have an object or an aim. No,
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: there's that in us that time can never tame, and
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: life will always seem a careless game. And they better
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: far forget those who say they love us, yet forget
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: blot out with bitterness. Our name New Year's Eve. It's
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: cruel cold on the waterfront, silent and dark and drear.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: Only the black tide, weltering, only the hissing snow, and
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: I alone, like a storm tossed wreck on this night
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: of the glad New Year, shuffling along in the icy wind,
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: ghastly and gaunt and slow. They're playing a tune in
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: mc guffy's saloon, and it's cheery and bright in there. God,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: but I'm weak since the bitter dawn, and never a
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: bite of food. I'll just go over and slip inside.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: I mustn't give way to despair. Perhaps I can bum
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: a little booze. If the boys are feeling good. They'll
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: jeer at me, and they'll sneer at me, and they'll
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: call me a whiskey soak. Have a drink. Well, thank'ee kindly, sir.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: I don't mind if I do a driveling, dirty gin
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: joint fiend the butt of the bar room joke, sunk
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: and sodden and hopeless. Another Well, here's to you. Mc
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: guffy is showing a bunch of the boys, how Bob
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: Fitzsimmons hit The barman is talking of Tammany Hall and
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: why the ward boss got fired. I'll just sneak into
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: a corner and they'll let me alone a bit. The
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: room is reeling round and round. Oh God, but I'm tired.
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: I'm tired. Roses she wore on her breast that night,
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: Oh but their scent was sweet. Alone, we sat on
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: the balcony, and the fan palms arched above. The witching
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: strain of a waltz by Strauss came up to our
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: cool retreat, and I prisoned her little hand in mine,
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: and I whispered my plea of love. Then sudden the
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: laughter died on her lips, and lowly she bent her head,
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: and oh, there came in the deep dark eyes, a
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: look that was heaven to see. And the moments went
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: and I waited there, and never a word was said.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: And she plucked from her bosom a rose of red,
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: and shyly gave it to me. Then the music swelled
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: to a crash of joy, and the lights blazed up
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: like day, and I held her fast to my throbbing heart,
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: and I kissed her bonny brow. She's mine, She's mine
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: for evermore, the violins seemed to say, and the bells
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: were ringing the new year in Oh God, I can
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: hear them now. Don't you remember that long last waltz
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: with its sobbing sad refrain. Don't you remember that last
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: goodbye and the dear eyes dim with tears. Don't you
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: remember that golden dream with never a hint of pain,
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: of lives that would blend like an angel's song in
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: the bliss of the coming years. Oh what I have lost?
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: What I have lost? Ethel, forgive, forgive? The red red
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: rose is faded now, and it's fifty years ago. Twere
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: better to die a thousand deaths than live each day
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: as I live. I've sinned, I've sunk to the lowest depths,
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: but oh I have suffered. So hark, oh hark. I
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: can hear the bells. Look, I can see her there,
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: fair as a dream. But it fades, And now I
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: can hear the dreadful hum of the crowded court. See
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: the judge looks down. Not guilty, my lord, I swear
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: the bells. I can hear the bells again, ethel, I come,
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: I come, rouse up, old man, it's twelve o'clock. You
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: can't sleep here, you know, say, ain't you got no sentiment?
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: Lift up your muddled head? Have a drink to the
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: glad new year, a drop before you go. Your darned
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: old dirty hobo. My god, here boys, he's dead. Comfort
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: say you've struck a heap of trouble busting business, lost
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: your wife. No one cares a cent about you. You
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: don't care a cent for life. Hard luck has of
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: hope bereft you. Health is failing. Wish you'd die. Why
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: you've still the sunshine left you? And the big blue
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: sky sky so blue it makes you wonder if it's
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: Heaven shining through earth, so smiling way out yonder sun
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: so bright it dazzles you. Birds are singing, flowers are flinging,
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: all left, fragrance on the breeze, dancing shadows, green still meadows.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: Don't you mope? You've still got these? These and none
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: can take them from you, these, and none can weigh
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: their worth. What you're tired and broke and beaten. Why
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: you're rich? You've got the earth? Yes, if you're a
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: tramp in tatters, while the blue sky bends above, you've
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: gone nearly All that matters. You've got God, and God
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: is love. Premonition twas a year ago, and the moon
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: was bright. Oh I remember so well, so well. I
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: walked with my love in a sea of light, and
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: the voice of my sweet was a silver bell. And
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: sudden the moon grew strangely dull, and sudden my love
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: had taken wing. I looked on the face of a
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: grinning skull. I strained to my heart A ghastly thing.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: Twas but fantasy. For my love lay still in my arms,
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: with her tender eyes aglow, and she wondered why my
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: lips were chill, why I was silent, and kissed us.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: So her year is gone, and the moon is bright,
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: a gibbous moon, like a ghost of woe. I sit
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: by a new made grave tonight, and my heart is broken.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: It's strange, you know, the tramps. Can you recall, dear comrade,
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: when we tramped God's land together, and we sang the
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: old old Earth song for our youth was very sweet,
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: When we drank and fought and lusted, as we mocked
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: at tie and tether along the road to anywhere, the
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: wide world at our feet, along the road to anywhere,
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: when each day had its story, when time was yet
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: our vassal, and life's jest was still on stale, when
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: peace unfathomed filled our hearts as bathed in amber glory.
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: Along the road to anywhere we walked, which the sunset's
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: pale alas the road to anywhere is pitfalled with disaster.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: There's hunger, want and weariness. Yet oh we loved it.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: So and on we tramped exultantly, and no man was
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: our master, and no man guessed what dreams were ours.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: As swinging heel and toe, we tramped the road to anywhere,
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: the magic road to anywhere, the tragic road to anywhere,
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: Such dear dim years ago, lone voi, you who have
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: lived in the land, you who have trusted the trail,
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: You who are strong to withstand, you who are swift
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: to a sail. Songs I have sung to beguile, vintage
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: of desperate years, hard as a harlot's smile, bitter as
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: on shed tears, little of joy or mirth, little of ease.
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: I sing sagas of men of earth, humanly suffering, much
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: as you all have done, savagely, faring forth, sons of
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: the midnight sun, argonauts of the north, far in the
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: land God forgot glimmers the lure of your trail. Still
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: in your lust, are you taught even to win is
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: to fail. Still, must you follow and fight under the
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: vampire wing? There in the long long night, hoping and
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: vanquishing husbandmen of the wild, reaping a barren gain, scourged
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: by desire, reconciled unto disaster and pain. These my songs
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: are for you, you who are seared with the brand.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: God knows I've tried to be true. Please, God you
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: will understand. End of Songs of a Sour Dough by
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: Robert W. Servis read by Phil Benson.