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Robert W Service - The Wood-Cutter
Work rating: Low

The sky is like an envelope, 
One of those blue official things; 
And, sealing it, to mock our hope, 
The moon, a silver wafer, clings. 
What shall we find when death gives leave 
To read — our sentence or reprieve? 

I`m holding it down on God`s scrap-pile, up on the fag-end of earth; 
O`er me a menace of mountains, a river that grits at my feet; 
Face to face with my soul-self, weighing my life at its worth; 
Wondering what I was made for, here in my last retreat. 

Last! Ah, yes, it`s the finish. Have ever you heard a man cry? 
(Sobs that rake him and rend him, right from the base of the chest.) 
That`s how I`ve cried, oh, so often; and now that my tears are dry, 
I sit in the desolate quiet and wait for the infinite Rest. 

Rest! Well, it`s restful around me; it`s quiet clean to the core. 
The mountains pose in their ermine, in golden the hills are clad; 
The big, blue, silt-freighted Yukon seethes by my cabin door, 
And I think it`s only the river that keeps me from going mad. 

By day it`s a ruthless monster, a callous, insatiate thing, 
With oily bubble and eddy, with sudden swirling of breast; 
By night it`s a writhing Titan, sullenly murmuring, 
Ever and ever goaded, and ever crying for rest. 

It cries for its human tribute, but me it will never drown. 
I`ve learned the lore of my river; my river obeys me well. 
I hew and I launch my cordwood, and raft it to Dawson town, 
Where wood means wine and women, and, incidentally, hell. 

Hell and the anguish thereafter. Here as I sit alone 
I`d give the life I have left me to lighten some load of care: 
(The bitterest part of the bitter is being denied to atone; 
Lips that have mocked at Heaven lend themselves ill to prayer.) 

Impotent as a beetle pierced on the needle of Fate; 
A wretch in a cosmic death-cell, peaks for my prison bars; 
`Whelmed by a world stupendous, lonely and listless I wait, 
Drowned in a sea of silence, strewn with confetti of stars. 

See! from far up the valley a rapier pierces the night, 
The white search-ray of a steamer. Swiftly, serenely it nears; 
A proud, white, alien presence, a glittering galley of light, 
Confident-poised, triumphant, freighted with hopes and fears. 

I look as one looks on a vision; I see it pulsating by; 
I glimpse joy-radiant faces; I hear the thresh of the wheel. 
Hoof-like my heart beats a moment; then silence swoops from the sky. 
Darkness is piled upon darkness. God only knows how I feel. 

Maybe you`ve seen me sometimes; maybe you`ve pitied me then — 
The lonely waif of the wood-camp, here by my cabin door. 
Some day you`ll look and see not; futile and outcast of men, 
I shall be far from your pity, resting forevermore. 

My life was a problem in ciphers, a weary and profitless sum. 
Slipshod and stupid I worked it, dazed by negation and doubt. 
Ciphers the total confronts me. Oh, Death, with thy moistened thumb, 
Stoop like a petulant schoolboy, wipe me forever out!
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