The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses

The Low-Down White

   This is the pay-day up at the mines, when the bearded brutes come down;
   There's money to burn in the streets to-night,
     so I've sent my klooch to town,
   With a haggard face and a ribband of red entwined in her hair of brown.

   And I know at the dawn she'll come reeling home
     with the bottles, one, two, three —
   One for herself, to drown her shame, and two big bottles for me,
   To make me forget the thing I am and the man I used to be.

   To make me forget the brand of the dog, as I crouch in this hideous place;
   To make me forget once I kindled the light of love in a lady's face,
   Where even the squalid Siwash now holds me a black disgrace.

   Oh, I have guarded my secret well!  And who would dream as I speak
   In a tribal tongue like a rogue unhung, 'mid the ranch-house filth and reek,
   I could roll to bed with a Latin phrase and rise with a verse of Greek?

   Yet I was a senior prizeman once, and the pride of a college eight;
   Called to the bar — my friends were true!
     but they could not keep me straight;
   Then came the divorce, and I went abroad and "died" on the River Plate.

   But I'm not dead yet; though with half a lung there isn't time to spare,
   And I hope that the year will see me out, and, thank God, no one will care —
   Save maybe the little slim Siwash girl with the rose of shame in her hair.

   She will come with the dawn, and the dawn is near; I can see its evil glow,
   Like a corpse-light seen through a frosty pane in a night of want and woe;
   And yonder she comes by the bleak bull-pines,
     swift staggering through the snow.