When I was a kid, I loved the poems of Robert Service. They told stories of the Yukon gold rush in a musical cadence that included lots of alliteration and rhymes. Service didn’t bother with subtleties in his most famous works. You knew what you were getting with The Cremation of Sam McGee, The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill and hundreds of others. He also wrote six novels, two autobiographies and even acted in the 1942 film, The Spoilers, with Marlene Dietrich. Visiting his restored cabin in Dawson City, Yukon – a preserved historical site – is on my bucket list. 
I don’t know why William Briggs of Toronto published this teeny, tiny poetry book in 1913, but I remember the day I bought it, decades ago. My Mom and I were at an antique fair and I believe I paid two dollars. Sadly, I didn’t preserve it properly and the paper is coming away from the cover. But it’s still a treasure and as you can see, it doesn’t take up much room. Perhaps there’s a way to restore it to its former glory. As I research that, I’ll leave you with a taste of The Cremation of Sam McGee.
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.”