The Cremation of Sam McGee

Robert W. Service’s comic ballad “The Cremation of Sam McGee” (1907) tells the story of two hardy Tennessee prospectors who brave the Yukon in search of gold during the height of the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush and the ill-considered promise one friend makes to cremate the other should he die in the forbidding frozen wilderness, which he does. Given the poem’s realistic account of the brutal conditions the prospectors faced in the Klondike, the poem’s delightfully lurid closing scene in which the ghost of Sam McGee, warm at last, appears smiling in his own funeral pyre, and the poem’s galloping beat and clever rhymes (perfect for dramatic recitation), the poem established Service as one of the most successful poets of his generation.

However, unlike other poets of his generation—self-styled Modernists eager to upend conventions of poetry and, in turn, reinvent the way poetry sounds and looks—Service found his niche working with inherited forms of poetry. Unlike the Modernists, he respected and even sought mass market appeal, which he found. His poetry collections and his novels, mostly mystery thrillers, allowed him to retire to a life of comfort along the French Riviera. Like ballads since the Middle Ages, “The Cremation of Sam McGee” tells a riveting story, certainly, but drives home important life lessons: the danger of reckless greed, the formidable challenge of nature itself, and, ultimately, the compelling implications of making a promise.

Poet Biography

Growing up on a small family farm in central Scotland, Robert W. Service (1874-1958), a voracious reader, developed a taste for exotic romantic tales that gave him a wanderlust for travel and adventure at odds with his family’s conservative life (his father was a respected banker). Considered a promising student, he matriculated to study literature at the prestigious University of Glasgow but, too much a free spirit, abandoned his education. By the time he was 20, swept up by the manly tales of Rudyard Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson, Service left Scotland and moved to the rugged frontier of British Columbia, eager to join the rush of would-be gold prospectors. Working odd jobs on ranches, in trading stores, and at newspapers, Service began writing poems based on the tales he would hear from grizzled locals about life in logging camps, fisheries, and, supremely, mining towns.

Although Service found a receptive audience for his poems in the region’s newspapers, the 1907 publication of his collection Songs of a Sourdough (sourdough was a slang term for the Yukon miners who lived on cheap and easy-to-keep sourdough bread) catapulted Service into international celebrity. The collection contained what became his two signature ballads, “The Cremation of Sam McGee” and “The Shooting of Dan McGrew.” Comfortably wealthy now, Service, over the next six years, published four more collections—each offering more stories about life in the Canadian frontier, and each a bestseller—before Service, ever restless, decided it was time to leave the Yukon.

Working as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star, Service settled in France. During World War I, he volunteered for the ambulance corps. Although, after the war, Service published a steady stream of poetry collections as well as adventure novels and mystery romps, he never equaled the success he enjoyed between World War I and World War II. By his estimation, he earned in excess of $1 million—making him the first millionaire writer in the English language. Most of his last 20 years, Service lived comfortably in coastal Brittany, summering in the Riviera. Although contemporary poetry had long evolved away from Service’s gripping sense of storytelling and his impeccable ear for catchy rhythms and rhymes, at the time of his death, in Lancieux at the age of 84, Service was still hailed in The New York Times as the “Bard of the Yukon.

Poem Text

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

      By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales 

      That would make your blood run cold; 

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, 

      But the queerest they ever did see 

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge 

      I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows. 

Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows. 

He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell; 

Though he'd often say in his homely way that "he'd sooner live in hell."

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail. 

Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail. 

If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see;

It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow, 

And the dogs were fed, and the stars o’erhead were dancing heel and toe, 

He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess; 

And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request."

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan: 

"It's the cursèd cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone. 

Yet 'tain't being dead—it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains; 

So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains."

A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail; 

And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale. 

He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee; 

And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven, 

With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given; 

It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: "You may tax your brawn and brains, 

But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains."

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.

In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.

In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring, 

Howled out their woes to the homeless snows— O God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow; 

And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low; 

The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in; 

And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay; 

It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May." 

And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;

Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum."

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire; 

Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher; 

The flames just soared, and the furnace roared—such a blaze you seldom see; 

And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so; 

And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow. 

It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why;

And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear; 

But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near; 

I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll just take a peep inside.

I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; ... then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;

And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door.  

It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm— 

Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."

There are strange things done in the midnight sun 

      By the men who moil for gold;  

The Arctic trails have their secret tales 

      That would make your blood run cold; 

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, 

      But the queerest they ever did see 

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge 

      I cremated Sam McGee.

Service, Robert W. “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” 1907. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The poem begins with a kind of trailer, a preview of the coming story that cautions readers of the “strange things” (Line 1) that occur in the Arctic wilderness, things that would make “your blood run cold” (Line 4). The strangest of all, the speaker, Cap, teases, is surely the story of the how he “cremated Sam McGee” (Line 8).

Sam McGee, from rural Tennessee, was lured to the Klondike wastes by the promise of easy gold. Sam constantly complained about the hellish cold that stabbed through even his heavy parka like a “driven nail” (Line 14). It is Christmas night. Sam, fatigued by the unrelenting cold and frustrated by the failure to find gold, feels death fast approaching. He elicits Cap to promise that when he dies, Cap will cremate him. Sam cannot stand to think that he will be forever buried in the cold: “It’s my awful dread of the icy grave that pains” (Line 23). Cap agrees. The following day, Sam McGee is dead.

Because for Cap his promise is his bond, he undertakes the difficult task of cremating a corpse in the cold Arctic setting. He drags the corpse on his sled. As days pass, he searches the blasted snowscape for sufficient wood to build a fire and a clear space to light it. Cap comes to loathe the dead weight of Sam McGee’s frozen body: “In my heart how I cursed that load” (Line 34). In Cap’s mind, the corpse, “the quiet clay” (Line 37), grows heavier and heavier as he drags it along. During long lonely nights, Cap even sings to the “hateful thing” (Line 40) that seemed to grin at him.

It is finally along the shores of Lake Lebarge that Cap chances upon the wreck of a sternwheeler, the Alice May, abandoned, lodged in the lake’s ice. Cap immediately sees the possibility, exclaiming, “Here […] is my cre-ma-tor-e-um” (Line 44)—the accents indicating his triumphant sense of relief.

With gusto, eager to fulfill his promise and get on with his own prospecting, Cap quickly heads to the ship’s firebox in the engine room, where the coal was burned, a ready-made crematorium. Cap pulls up some loosened planks and, with coal he finds strewn about the ship’s deck, he starts a massive fire. “Such a blaze you seldom see” (Line 47), he crows with some pride. Relieved to be keeping his word, Cap unceremoniously stuffs the corpse of Sam McGee into the glowing fire.

The stench of the “greasy smoke” (Line 52) and the unsettling sounds of Sam McGee sizzling on the open fire upset Cap, so he leaves Sam McGee’s body to burn. Before he departs, however, he thinks he should check the boiler room, despite his uneasiness over what he will see, and make sure he has kept his promise: “I’ll just take a peep inside / I guess he’s cooked” (Lines 55-56).

What he sees when he opens the boiler-room door is unnerving. The contented ghost of Sam McGee sits squarely in the “heart of the furnace roar” (Line 57), warm at last and “looking cool and calm” (Line 57). Petulantly, the ghost scolds Cap to shut the furnace door, that he is letting in the cold.

Cap closes the poem reprising the opening lines, his reader now understanding the nature of the “queer” (Line 65) sight that would make the blood “run cold” (Line 64).