"Just think! some night the stars will gleam
Upon a cold, grey stone,
And trace a name with silver beam,
And lo! 'twill be your own,
"That night is speeding on to greet
Your epitaphic rhyme.
Your life is but a little beat
Within the heart of Time.
"A little gain, a little pain,
A laugh lest you may moan;
A little blame, a little fame,
A star-gleam on a stone."
Rhymes of a Rolling Stone.
Perhaps it is because the men of the north are always so near to death
and so conscious of death that they hold to the strict Puritanical
rules of conduct that they do, expressed in Service's "The Woman and
the Angel," that story of the Angel who came down to earth and
withstood all the temptations until he met the beautiful, sinning
woman, and who was about to fall. Hear her tempt him:
"Then sweetly she mocked his scruples, and softly she him beguiled:
'You, who are verily man among men, speak with the tongue of a child.
We have outlived the old standards; we have burst like an overtight
thong
The ancient outworn, Puritanic traditions of Right and Wrong.'"
"Then the Master feared for His angel, and called him again to His
side,
For O, the woman was wondrous, and O, the angel was tried!
And deep in his hell sang the devil, and this was the strain of his
song:
'The ancient, outworn, Puritanic traditions of Right and Wrong.'"
The Spell of the Yukon.
And I doubt not, but that we all need that warning not to give up "The
ancient, outworn, Puritanic traditions of Right and Wrong."