Sam McGee's Cremation

It was on Halloween of 1976 that I recited this poem from memory for the first time around a campfire in the woods. It was my old scout master, a retired colonel called Glendon Huntington, who gave me a copy of a book called Spell of the Yukon. Here then is the cremation of Sam McGee and proof positive that a promise made is a debt unpaid. There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who mowel for gold. The arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold. The northern lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see was that night on the march of Lake Lebarge