This one's from Carolyn

A few years ago, my wife, Carolyn, wrote a poem that's a spoof of several poems we all read in high school. I was going through some old emails and came across it.

Here it is.

Henry

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Annabel Lee Muller and Sam "Judge" McGee: A Romance of the Frozen North

There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold;

It was many and many a year ago, In Alaska by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know, By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge She cremated Sam McGee.

He was a child and she was a child, In Alaska by the sea;
But they loved with a love that was more than love-He and his Annabel Lee;

There’s the wonderful love of a beautiful maid,
And the love of a staunch true man,
And the love of a baby that’s unafraid—
All have existed since time began.
But the most wonderful love, the Love of all loves,
Even greater than the love for Mother,
Is the infinite, tenderest, passionate love
Of one dead drunk for another.

And ere the languid summer died,

Sweet Ann became McGee's bride.

But on the day that they were mated,

Ann's brother Bob was intoxicated;

And Ann's relations, twelve in all,

Were very drunk in the barroom hall.

And when the summer came again,

The young bride bore him babies twain;

Sam thought of the twins, and wished that they

Looked less like the men who raked the hay.

And there be women fair as she,

Whose verbs and nouns do more agree.

So Sam soon thought his Ann a whore,

And she thought him a weak-willed bore.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam ‘round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he’d often say in his homely way that “he’d sooner live in hell.”

And this was the reason that, long ago, In Alaska by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling handsome Sam Mcgee;

And that very night, as they lay packed tight in their robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o’erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to her, and “Hon,” says he, “I’ll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I’m asking you, don’t refuse my last request.”



Well, he seemed so low that she couldn’t say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
“It’s the cursed cold, and it’s got right hold till I’m chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet ‘taint being dead--it’s my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you’ll cremate my last remains.”

He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.
There wasn’t a breath in that land of death, and she hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that she couldn’t get rid, because of a promise given;

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on she went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
And the trail was bad, and she felt half mad, but she swore she would not give in;
Still, she had to eat, and he was fresh meat, and she hearkened with a grin.

Some planks she tore from the cabin floor, and she lit the boiler fire;
Some coal she found that was lying around, and she heaped the fuel higher;
Then she made a hike, for she didn’t like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.

Ann was sick with dread, but she bravely said: “I’ll just take a peep in there.
I guess he’s cooked, and it’s time I looked; since I'd like him medium rare.

But the winds did howl, And Ann ran afoul, of his sister, proud and cold,

"She's like Alferd Packer! We all must attack her!" Sis said, vain of her rank and gold.

So that his highborn kinsmen came and bore away Annabel Lee

To shut her up in a prison cell in the penitentiary.

But Ann's love it was stronger by far than the guards of the prison by the sea

And the moon never beamed without bringing her dreams of her taste for Sam Mcgee,

So she looked at the stars and then broke through the bars of Nome's penitentiary. The Dawson Trail she dashes and returns to the ashes of her lover Sam Mcgee,

And the stars never rise but she tastes the bright eyes of delicious Sam Mcgee

And so, all the night-tide, she lies down by his side In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In his tomb by the sounding sea.


God pity them both and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"

If, of all words of tongue and pen,

The saddest are, "It might have been,"

More sad are these we daily see:

"It is, but hadn't ought to be."

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by Carolyn Farkas, Bret Harte, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Service, John Greenleaf Whittier, and, of course, Anonymous)