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
The Northern Lights have seen strange sights
But the strangest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee

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

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail
If our eyes we’d close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see
It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe
He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess
And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request"

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
"It’s the cursèd cold, and it’s got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone
Yet ’tain't 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"
A pal’s last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale
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