Famous Dawson Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Dawson poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous dawson poems. These examples illustrate what a famous dawson poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Tebb, Barry
...ST THE GRAIN
“Oxford be silent, I this truth must write
Leeds hath for rarities undone thee quite.”
- William Dawson of Hackney, Nov.7th 1704
“The repressed becomes the poem”
Louise Bogan
1
Well it’s Friday the thirteenth
So I’d better begin with luck
As I prepare for a journey to
The north, the place where I began
And I was lucky even before I
Was born for the red-hot shrapnel fell
And missed my mother by an inch
As she walked through the Bl...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...Where are the dames I used to know
In Dawson in the days of yore?
Alas, it's fifty years ago,
And most, I guess, have "gone before."
The swinging scythe is swift to mow
Alike the gallant and the fair;
And even I, with gouty toe,
Am glad to fill a rocking chair.
Ah me, I fear each gaysome girl
Who in champagne I used to toast,
or cozen in the waltz's whirl,
In now alas, a wistful ghost.<...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...It was the steamer Alice May that sailed the Yukon foam.
And touched in every river camp from Dawson down to Nome.
It was her builder, owner, pilot, Captain Silas Geer,
Who took her through the angry ice, the last boat of the year;
Who patched her cracks with gunny sacks and wound her pipes with wire,
And cut the spruce upon the banks to feed her boiler fire;
Who headed her into the stream and bucked its mighty flow,
And nosed her up the little c...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...bad, but most is in between;
Yeh, some is scum and some is dumb, and some is just plumb cold;
But of straight-shootin' Dawson dames Maree was rated queen,
As pretty as a pansy, wi' a heart o' Hunker gold.
And so although I didn't know her more that passin' by,
I told how Spike would seek my Boss, and jobless I would be;
She listened sympathetic like: "Zut! Baby, don't you cry;
I lend to you zee hundred bucks," said Montreal Maree.
Now though I zippered up my mug som...Read more of this...
by
Goose, Mother
...Nancy Dawson was so fineShe wouldn't get up to serve the swine;She lies in bed till eight or nine,So it's Oh, poor Nancy Dawson.And do ye ken Nancy Dawson, honey?The wife who sells the barley, honey?She won't get up to feed her swine,And do ye ken Nancy Dawson, honey?...Read more of this...
by
Strode, William
...Dawson the Butler's dead: Although I think
Poets were ne'er infusde with single drinke
Ile spend a farthing muse; some watry verse
Will serve the turne to cast upon his hearse;
If any cannot weepe amongst us here
Take off his pott, and so squeeze out a tear:
Weepe, O his cheeses, weepe till yee bee good,
Yee that are dry or in the sun have stood;
In mossy co...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...e, my brethren! -- I'd rather gamble than sleep.
I've gambled the 'ole world over, from Monte Carlo to Maine;
From Dawson City to Dover, from San Francisco to Spain.
Cards! They 'ave been me ruin. They've taken me pride and me pelf,
And when I'd no one to play with -- why, I'd go and I'd play by meself.
And Sam 'e would sit and watch me, as I shuffled a greasy deck,
And 'e'd say: "You're bound to Perdition,"
And I'd answer: "Git off me neck!"
And that's 'ow ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...er a mildewed bone.
And so they fought, by fear untaught, till haply it befell
One dawn of day she slipped away to Dawson town to sell
The fruit of sin, this black fox skin that had made their lives a hell.
She slipped away as still he lay, she clutched the wondrous fur;
Her pulses beat, her foot was fleet, her fear was as a spur;
She laughed with glee, she did not see him rise and follow her.
The bluffs uprear and grimly peer far over Dawson town;
They see its...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...To Dawson Town came Percy Brown from London on the Thames.
A pane of glass was in his eye, and stockings on his stems.
Upon the shoulder of his coat a leather pad he wore,
To rest his deadly rifle when it wasn't seeking gore;
The which it must have often been, for Major Percy Brown,
According to his story was a hunter of renown,
Who in the Murrumbidgee ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...all the night each cabin light goes out and then goes in,
A blood-red heliograph of lust, a semaphore of sin.
From Dawson Town, soft skulking down, each lewdster seeks his mate;
And glad and bad, kimono clad, the wanton women wait.
The Klondike gossips to the moon, and sinners o'er its bars;
Each silent hill is dark and chill, and chill the patient stars.
Yet hark! upon the Rocking Bridge a bacchanalian step;
A whispered: "Come," the skirl of some hell-raking dem...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...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'erh...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...there came a whisper, and it maddened us every man,
And I got in on Bonanza before the big rush began.
"Oh, those Dawson days, and the sin and the blaze, and the town all open wide!
(If God made me in His likeness, sure He let the devil inside.)
But we all were mad, both the good and the bad, and as for the women, well --
No spot on the map in so short a space has hustled more souls to hell.
"Money was just like dirt there, easy to get and to spend.
I was a...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...Globe Brand Tea up any hill can ride."
And every lady in the band revived on Globe Brand Tea,
That Atcherley and Dawson sell in George Street, near the Quay,
And Howling Swells and Scorchers both proclaim its purity....Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...hon, silver, sinuous, vast,
That writhed on a shroud of velvet--well, it was done at last.
There were the tents of Dawson, there the scar of the slide;
Swiftly we poled o'er the shallows, swiftly leapt o'er the side.
Fires fringed the mouth of Bonanza; sunset gilded the dome;
The test of the trail was over--thank God, thank God, we were Home!...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...own.
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 ...Read more of this...
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