Hello, and welcome to the back of the book.

I'm your host, Christopher Scalia of the American Enterprise Institute.

When John McCain was a POW during the Vietnam War at the notorious Hanoi Hilton, learning and reciting poetry helped him stay sane and keep

his mind active. Every day, the prisoner in the cell next to him, Bill Lawrence, would tap a

couple of lines of his favorite poem to

McCain. McCain, who didn't know the poem before, would tap the lines back. Eventually, he memorized

the entire 68-line work. The poem was Robert Services, The Cremation of Sam McGee, which tells the story of a Yukon

prospector who promises his friend, the always shivering fellow prospector named in the title,

that he would cremate his body when he dies. The narrator must carry the corpse with him through the

cold and snow until he finds a way to burn it.

When he finally finds a suitable furnace, the speaker has a spooky and very funny spectral vision.

The poem stayed with McCain.

During the 1999 GOP primary campaign, Comedy Central asked McCain, who his favorite poet was, his answer, after a

pause. Robert's service, I guess. As my AEI colleague Andy Ferguson described the event for the

weekly standard at the time, quote, OK, the comedians pressed as the cameras rolled, then recite some of his poetry.

Gotcha?

Here, the Comedy Central team revealed their own provincialism.

They were apparently ignorant of one of the ironclad rules of modern poetry.

Anyone who likes Robert's service can recite Robert's service by the yard.

And that's what McCain did.

After a bumpy push-off by one witness's account, he ran through all 14 stanzas of the

cremation of Sam McGee, Service's great ballad that deathlessly begins.

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