The Spell of the Yukon | Page 7

grim as hell the worst is, can you round it off with curses? Then hearken to the Wild -- it's wanting you.
Have you suffered, starved and triumphed,?groveled down, yet grasped at glory,?Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole??"Done things" just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story, Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul??Have you seen God in His splendors, heard the text that nature renders? (You'll never hear it in the family pew.)?The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things -- Then listen to the Wild -- it's calling you.
They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with their preaching, They have soaked you in convention through and through;?They have put you in a showcase; you're a credit to their teaching -- But can't you hear the Wild? -- it's calling you.?Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us; Let us journey to a lonely land I know.?There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam to guide us, And the Wild is calling, calling . . . let us go.
The Lone Trail
Ye who know the Lone Trail fain would follow it,?Though it lead to glory or the darkness of the pit.?Ye who take the Lone Trail, bid your love good-by;?The Lone Trail, the Lone Trail follow till you die.
The trails of the world be countless, and most of the trails be tried; You tread on the heels of the many, till you come where the ways divide; And one lies safe in the sunlight, and the other is dreary and wan, Yet you look aslant at the Lone Trail, and the Lone Trail lures you on. And somehow you're sick of the highway, with its noise and its easy needs, And you seek the risk of the by-way, and you reck not where it leads. And sometimes it leads to the desert, and the tongue swells out of the mouth, And you stagger blind to the mirage, to die in the mocking drouth. And sometimes it leads to the mountain, to the light of the lone camp-fire, And you gnaw your belt in the anguish of hunger-goaded desire. And sometimes it leads to the Southland, to the swamp where the orchid glows, And you rave to your grave with the fever,?and they rob the corpse for its clothes.?And sometimes it leads to the Northland, and the scurvy softens your bones, And your flesh dints in like putty, and you spit out your teeth like stones. And sometimes it leads to a coral reef in the wash of a weedy sea, And you sit and stare at the empty glare where the gulls wait greedily. And sometimes it leads to an Arctic trail,?and the snows where your torn feet freeze,?And you whittle away the useless clay, and crawl on your hands and knees. Often it leads to the dead-pit; always it leads to pain;?By the bones of your brothers ye know it, but oh, to follow you're fain. By your bones they will follow behind you,?till the ways of the world are made plain.
Bid good-by to sweetheart, bid good-by to friend;?The Lone Trail, the Lone Trail follow to the end.?Tarry not, and fear not, chosen of the true;?Lover of the Lone Trail, the Lone Trail waits for you.
The Pines
We sleep in the sleep of ages, the bleak, barbarian pines;?The gray moss drapes us like sages, and closer we lock our lines, And deeper we clutch through the gelid gloom where never a sunbeam shines.
On the flanks of the storm-gored ridges are our black battalions massed; We surge in a host to the sullen coast, and we sing in the ocean blast; From empire of sea to empire of snow we grip our empire fast.
To the niggard lands were we driven, 'twixt desert and floes are we penned; To us was the Northland given, ours to stronghold and defend; Ours till the world be riven in the crash of the utter end;
Ours from the bleak beginning, through the aeons of death-like sleep; Ours from the shock when the naked rock was hurled from the hissing deep; Ours through the twilight ages of weary glacier creep.
Wind of the East, Wind of the West, wandering to and fro,?Chant your songs in our topmost boughs, that the sons of men may know The peerless pine was the first to come, and the pine will be last to go!
We pillar the halls of perfumed gloom; we plume where the eagles soar; The North-wind swoops from the brooding Pole,?and our ancients crash and roar;?But where one falls from the crumbling walls shoots up a hardy score.
We spring from the gloom of the canyon's womb; in the valley's lap we lie; From the white foam-fringe, where the breakers cringe?to the peaks