The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses Part 1

The Spell of the Yukon.

by Robert Service.

The Land G.o.d Forgot

The lonely sunsets flare forlorn Down valleys dreadly desolate; The lordly mountains soar in scorn As still as death, as stern as fate.

_The lonely sunsets flame and die; The giant valleys gulp the night; The monster mountains sc.r.a.pe the sky, Where eager stars are diamond-bright._

So gaunt against the gibbous moon, Piercing the silence velvet-piled, A lone wolf howls his ancient rune -- The fell arch-spirit of the Wild.

_O outcast land! O leper land!

Let the lone wolf-cry all express The hate insensate of thy hand, Thy heart's abysmal loneliness._

The Spell of the Yukon

I wanted the gold, and I sought it, I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.

Was it famine or scurvy -- I fought it; I hurled my youth into a grave.

I wanted the gold, and I got it -- Came out with a fortune last fall, -- Yet somehow life's not what I thought it, And somehow the gold isn't all.

No! There's the land. (Have you seen it?) It's the cussedest land that I know, From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it To the deep, deathlike valleys below.

Some say G.o.d was tired when He made it; Some say it's a fine land to shun; Maybe; but there's some as would trade it For no land on earth -- and I'm one.

You come to get rich (d.a.m.ned good reason); You feel like an exile at first; You hate it like h.e.l.l for a season, And then you are worse than the worst.

It grips you like some kinds of sinning; It twists you from foe to a friend; It seems it's been since the beginning; It seems it will be to the end.

I've stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow That's plumb-full of hush to the brim; I've watched the big, husky sun wallow In crimson and gold, and grow dim, Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming, And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop; And I've thought that I surely was dreaming, With the peace o' the world piled on top.

The summer -- no sweeter was ever; The suns.h.i.+ny woods all athrill; The grayling aleap in the river, The bighorn asleep on the hill.

The strong life that never knows harness; The wilds where the caribou call; The freshness, the freedom, the farness -- O G.o.d! how I'm stuck on it all.

The winter! the brightness that blinds you, The white land locked tight as a drum, The cold fear that follows and finds you, The silence that bludgeons you dumb.

The snows that are older than history, The woods where the weird shadows slant; The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery, I've bade 'em good-by -- but I can't.

There's a land where the mountains are nameless, And the rivers all run G.o.d knows where; There are lives that are erring and aimless, And deaths that just hang by a hair; There are hards.h.i.+ps that n.o.body reckons; There are valleys unpeopled and still; There's a land -- oh, it beckons and beckons, And I want to go back -- and I will.

They're making my money diminish; I'm sick of the taste of champagne.

Thank G.o.d! when I'm skinned to a finish I'll pike to the Yukon again.

I'll fight -- and you bet it's no sham-fight; It's h.e.l.l! -- but I've been there before; And it's better than this by a damsite -- So me for the Yukon once more.

There's gold, and it's haunting and haunting; It's luring me on as of old; Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting So much as just finding the gold.

It's the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder, It's the forests where silence has lease; It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder, It's the stillness that fills me with peace.

The Heart of the Sourdough

There where the mighty mountains bare their fangs unto the moon, There where the sullen sun-dogs glare in the snow-bright, bitter noon, And the glacier-glutted streams sweep down at the clarion call of June.

There where the livid tundras keep their tryst with the tranquil snows; There where the silences are sp.a.w.ned, and the light of h.e.l.l-fire flows Into the bowl of the midnight sky, violet, amber and rose.

There where the rapids churn and roar, and the ice-floes bellowing run; Where the tortured, twisted rivers of blood rush to the setting sun -- I've packed my kit and I'm going, boys, ere another day is done.

I knew it would call, or soon or late, as it calls the whirring wings; It's the olden lure, it's the golden lure, it's the lure of the timeless things, And to-night, oh, G.o.d of the trails untrod, how it whines in my heart-strings!

I'm sick to death of your well-groomed G.o.ds, your make believe and your show; I long for a whiff of bacon and beans, a snug shakedown in the snow; A trail to break, and a life at stake, and another bout with the foe.

With the raw-ribbed Wild that abhors all life, the Wild that would crush and rend, I have clinched and closed with the naked North, I have learned to defy and defend; Shoulder to shoulder we have fought it out -- yet the Wild must win in the end.

I have flouted the Wild. I have followed its lure, fearless, familiar, alone; By all that the battle means and makes I claim that land for mine own; Yet the Wild must win, and a day will come when I shall be overthrown.

Then when as wolf-dogs fight we've fought, the lean wolf-land and I; Fought and bled till the snows are red under the reeling sky; Even as lean wolf-dog goes down will I go down and die.

The Three Voices

The waves have a story to tell me, As I lie on the lonely beach; Chanting aloft in the pine-tops, The wind has a lesson to teach; But the stars sing an anthem of glory I cannot put into speech.

The waves tell of ocean s.p.a.ces, Of hearts that are wild and brave, Of populous city places, Of desolate sh.o.r.es they lave, Of men who sally in quest of gold To sink in an ocean grave.

The wind is a mighty roamer; He bids me keep me free, Clean from the taint of the gold-l.u.s.t, Hardy and pure as he; Cling with my love to nature, As a child to the mother-knee.

But the stars throng out in their glory, And they sing of the G.o.d in man; They sing of the Mighty Master, Of the loom his fingers span, Where a star or a soul is a part of the whole, And weft in the wondrous plan.

Here by the camp-fire's flicker, Deep in my blanket curled, I long for the peace of the pine-gloom, When the scroll of the Lord is unfurled, And the wind and the wave are silent, And world is singing to world.

The Law of the Yukon