The Spell of the Yukon | Page 3

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The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses
by Robert W. Service

[British-born Canadian Poet -- 1874-1958.]
[This text was also published (in Britain) under the title, "Songs of a
Sourdough".]
[This etext was pretty much matches the American editions
of 1907
and 1916. Some minor errors have been corrected.]
[Note on text: Italicized stanzas will be indented 5 spaces. Italicized
AND indented stanzas will be indented 10 spaces. Italicized words or
phrases will be capitalized. Lines longer than 77 characters have been
broken according to metre,
and the continuation is indented two
spaces.]
To C. M.
The Land God 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 scrape 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.
CONTENTS
The Land God Forgot
The lonely sunsets flare forlorn,
The Spell of the Yukon
I wanted the gold, and I sought it,

The Heart of the Sourdough
There where the mighty mountains bare
their fangs unto the moon,
The Three Voices
The waves have a story to tell me,
The Law of the Yukon
This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she
makes it plain,
The Parson's Son
This is the song of the parson's son, as he squats in
his shack alone,
The Call of the Wild
Have you gazed on naked grandeur where
there's nothing else to gaze on,
The Lone Trail
Ye who know the Lone Trail fain would follow it,
The Pines
We sleep in the sleep of ages, the bleak, barbarian pines,
The Lure of Little Voices
There's a cry from out the loneliness -- oh,
listen, Honey, listen!
The Song of the Wage-Slave
When the long, long day is over, and the
Big Boss gives me my pay,
Grin
If you're up against a bruiser and you're getting knocked about,
The Shooting of Dan McGrew
A bunch of the boys were whooping it
up in the Malamute saloon,
The Cremation of Sam McGee
There are strange things done in the
midnight sun,
My Madonna
I haled me a woman from the street,
Unforgotten
I know a garden where the lilies gleam,
The Reckoning
It's fine to have a blow-out in a fancy restaurant,

Quatrains
One said: Thy life is thine to make or mar,
The Men That Don't Fit In
There's a race of men that don't fit in,
Music in the Bush
O'er the dark pines she sees the silver moon,
The Rhyme of the Remittance Man
There's a four-pronged buck
a-swinging in the shadow of my cabin,
The Low-Down White
This is the pay-day up at the mines, when the
bearded brutes come down,
The Little Old Log Cabin
When a man gets on his uppers in a
hard-pan sort of town,
The Younger Son
If you leave the gloom of London and you seek a
glowing land,
The March of the Dead
The cruel war was over -- oh, the triumph
was so sweet,
"Fighting Mac"
A pistol shot rings round and round the world,
The Woman and the Angel
An angel was tired of heaven, as he
lounged in the golden street,
The Rhyme of the Restless Ones
We couldn't sit and study for the
law,
New Year's Eve
It's cruel cold on the water-front, silent and dark and
drear,
Comfort
Say! You've struck a heap of trouble,
The Harpy
There was a woman, and she was wise; woefully wise was
she,

Premonition
'Twas a year ago, and the moon was bright,
The Tramps
Can you recall, dear comrade, when we tramped God's
land together,
L'Envoi
You who have lived in the land,
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 God 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 (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