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

You come to get rich (damned good reason),You feel like an exile at first;You hate it like hell 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 hollowThat's plumb-full of hush to the brim;I've watched the big, husky sun wallowIn 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 sunshiny 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 God! 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-bye--but I can't.

There's a land where the mountains are nameless,And the rivers all run God knows where;There are lives that are erring and aimless,And deaths that just hang by a hair;There are hardships that nobody 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 God! when I'm skinned to a finishI'll pike to the Yukon again.I'll fight--and you bet it's no sham-fight;It's hell!--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.