Individual Entry Archive: Consider This

In The Yukon Wild

You know what it's like in the Yukon wild
When it's sixty-nine below;
When the ice-worms wriggle their purple heads
Through the crust of the pale blue snow;
When the pine-trees crack like little guns In the silence of the wood,
And the icicles hang down like tusks Under the parka hood;
When the stove-pipe smoke breaks sudden off,
And the sky is weirdly lit,
And the careless feel of a bit of steel Burns like a red-hot spit;
When the mercury is a frozen ball,
And the frost-fiend stalks to kill --
Well, it was just like that that day when I Set out to look for Bill.
—Robert W. Service in The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill

Source: Online copy of The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill by Robert W. Service