Unexpected spring snow storm: keeping
me in tonight with a blazing fire in the stove. When it blows and swirls cold
about, I retire into a good poem or short story. Tonight it is
the Ballad of Blasphemous Bill, one of Robert Service’s fine examples of
couplet and meter craftsmanship.
Few can make the reader see it, feel it,
like Service.

   A short excerpt:

        “…And I burst in the door, and there on the floor,

           frozen to death, lay Bill.

        Ice, white ice, like a winding-sheet, sheathing each smoke-grimed wall;

        Ice on the stove-pipe, ice on the bed, ice gleaming over all;
        Sparkling ice on the dead man's chest, glittering ice in his hair,
        Ice on his fingers, ice in his heart, ice in his glassy stare…”

                    Boss, my paws have gone cold
                    just reading this,         Max tdc