Robert W. Service

“ On hands and knees will I buck it; with every breath will I fight;
It’s life, it’s life that I fight for — never it seemed so sweet.
I know that my face is frozen; my hands are numblike and dead;
But oh, my feet keep a-moving, heavy and hard and slow;
They’re trying to kill me, kill me, the night that’s black overhead,
The wind that cuts like a razor, the whipcord lash of the snow. ”

“ See how my feet are moving — awfully funny they look —
Moving as if they belonged to a someone that wasn’t me.
The wind down the night’s long alley bowls me down like a pin;
I stagger and fall and stagger, crawl arm-deep in the snow. ”

“ Curse on my feet that slip so, my poor tired, stumbling feet —
I guess they’re a job for the surgeon, they feel so queerlike to lift —
I’ll rest them just for a moment — oh, but to rest is sweet!
The awful wind cannot get me, deep, deep down in the drift. ”