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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=508700" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Ballad Of The Black Fox Skin</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There was Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike living the life of shame,<br>When unto them in the Long, Long Night came the man-who-had-no-name;<br>Bearing his prize of a black fox pelt, out of the Wild he came.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">His cheeks were blanched as the flume-head foam when the brown spring freshets flow;<br>Deep in their dark, sin-calcined pits were his sombre eyes aglow;<br>They knew him far for the fitful man who spat forth blood on the snow.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;Did ever you see such a skin?&quot; quoth he; &quot;there's nought in the world so fine--<br>Such fullness of fur as black as the night, such lustre, such size, such shine;<br>It's life to a one-lunged man like me; it's London, it's women, it's wine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;The Moose-hides called it the devil-fox, and swore that no man could kill;<br>That he who hunted it, soon or late, must surely suffer some ill;<br>But I laughed at them and their old squaw-tales. Ha! Ha! I'm laughing still.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;For look ye, the skin--it's as smooth as sin, and black as the core of the Pit.<br>By gun or by trap, whatever the hap, I swore I would capture it;<br>By star and by star afield and afar, I hunted and would not quit.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;For the devil-fox, it was swift and sly, and it seemed to fleer at me;<br>I would wake in fright by the camp-fire light, hearing its evil glee;<br>Into my dream its eyes would gleam, and its shadow would I see.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;It sniffed and ran from the ptarmigan I had poisoned to excess;<br>Unharmed it sped from my wrathful lead ('twas as if I shot by guess);<br>Yet it came by night in the stark moonlight to mock at my weariness.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;I tracked it up where the mountains hunch like the vertebrae of the world;<br>I tracked it down to the death-still pits where the avalanche is hurled;<br>From the glooms to the sacerdotal snows, where the carded clouds are curled.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;From the vastitudes where the world protrudes through clouds like seas up-shoaled,<br>I held its track till it led me back to the land I had left of old--<br>The land I had looted many moons. I was weary and sick and cold.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;I was sick, soul-sick, of the futile chase, and there and then I swore<br>The foul fiend fox might scathless go, for I would hunt no more;<br>Then I rubbed mine eyes in a vast surprise--it stood by my cabin door.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;A rifle raised in the wraith-like gloom, and a vengeful shot that sped;<br>A howl that would thrill a cream-faced corpse-- and the demon fox lay dead. . . .<br>Yet there was never a sign of wound, and never a drop he bled.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;So that was the end of the great black fox, and here is the prize I've won;<br>And now for a drink to cheer me up--I've mushed since the early sun;<br>We'll drink a toast to the sorry ghost of the fox whose race is run.&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">II</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike, bad as the worst were they;<br>In their road-house down by the river-trail they waited and watched for prey;<br>With wine and song they joyed night long, and they slept like swine by day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For things were done in the Midnight Sun that no tongue will ever tell;<br>And men there be who walk earth-free, but whose names are writ in hell--<br>Are writ in flames with the guilty names of Fournier and Labelle.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Put not your trust in a poke of dust would ye sleep the sleep of sin;<br>For there be those who would rob your clothes ere yet the dawn comes in;<br>And a prize likewise in a woman's eyes is a peerless black fox skin.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Put your faith in the mountain cat if you lie within his lair;<br>Trust the fangs of the mother-wolf, and the claws of the lead-ripped bear;<br>But oh, of the wiles and the gold-tooth smiles of a dance-hall wench beware!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Wherefore it was beyond all laws that lusts of man restrain,<br>A man drank deep and sank to sleep never to wake again;<br>And the Yukon swallowed through a hole the cold corpse of the slain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">III</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The black fox skin a shadow cast from the roof nigh to the floor;<br>And sleek it seemed and soft it gleamed, and the woman stroked it o'er;<br>And the man stood by with a brooding eye, and gnashed his teeth and swore.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When thieves and thugs fall out and fight there's fell arrears to pay;<br>And soon or late sin meets its fate, and so it fell one day<br>That Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike fanged up like dogs at bay.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;The skin is mine, all mine,&quot; she cried; &quot;I did the deed alone.&quot;<br>&quot;It's share and share with a guilt-yoked pair&quot;, he hissed in a pregnant tone;<br>And so they snarled like malamutes over a mildewed bone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And so they fought, by fear untaught, till haply it befell<br>One dawn of day she slipped away to Dawson town to sell<br>The fruit of sin, this black fox skin that had made their lives a hell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She slipped away as still he lay, she clutched the wondrous fur;<br>Her pulses beat, her foot was fleet, her fear was as a spur;<br>She laughed with glee, she did not see him rise and follow her.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The bluffs uprear and grimly peer far over Dawson town;<br>They see its lights a blaze o' nights and harshly they look down;<br>They mock the plan and plot of man with grim, ironic frown.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The trail was steep; 'twas at the time when swiftly sinks the snow;<br>All honey-combed, the river ice was rotting down below;<br>The river chafed beneath its rind with many a mighty throe.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And up the swift and oozy drift a woman climbed in fear,<br>Clutching to her a black fox fur as if she held it dear;<br>And hard she pressed it to her breast--then Windy Ike drew near.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She made no moan--her heart was stone--she read his smiling face,<br>And like a dream flashed all her life's dark horror and disgrace;<br>A moment only--with a snarl he hurled her into space.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She rolled for nigh an hundred feet; she bounded like a ball;<br>From crag to crag she carromed down through snow and timber fall; . . .<br>A hole gaped in the river ice; the spray flashed--that was all.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A bird sang for the joy of spring, so piercing sweet and frail;<br>And blinding bright the land was dight in gay and glittering mail;<br>And with a wondrous black fox skin a man slid down the trail.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">IV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A wedge-faced man there was who ran along the river bank,<br>Who stumbled through each drift and slough, and ever slipped and sank,<br>And ever cursed his Maker's name, and ever &quot;hooch&quot; he drank.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He travelled like a hunted thing, hard harried, sore distrest;<br>The old grandmother moon crept out from her cloud-quilted nest;<br>The aged mountains mocked at him in their primeval rest.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Grim shadows diapered the snow; the air was strangely mild;<br>The valley's girth was dumb with mirth, the laughter of the wild;<br>The still, sardonic laughter of an ogre o'er a child.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The river writhed beneath the ice; it groaned like one in pain,<br>And yawning chasms opened wide, and closed and yawned again;<br>And sheets of silver heaved on high until they split in twain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">From out the road-house by the trail they saw a man afar<br>Make for the narrow river-reach where the swift cross-currents are;<br>Where, frail and worn, the ice is torn and the angry waters jar.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But they did not see him crash and sink into the icy flow;<br>They did not see him clinging there, gripped by the undertow,<br>Clawing with bleeding finger-nails at the jagged ice and snow.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They found a note beside the hole where he had stumbled in:<br>&quot;Here met his fate by evil luck a man who lived in sin,<br>And to the one who loves me least I leave this black fox skin.&quot;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And strange it is; for, though they searched the river all around,<br>No trace or sign of black fox skin was ever after found;<br>Though one man said he saw the tread of HOOFS deep in the ground.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Robert+William+Service">Robert William Service</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=508700" data-title="The Ballad Of The Black Fox Skin de Robert William Service" data-description="I

There was Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike living the life of shame,
When unto them in the Long, Long Night came the man-who-had-no-name;
Bearing his prize of a black fox pelt, out of the Wild he came.

His cheeks were blanched as the flume-he..."></div>
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