The Spell of the Yukon | Page 4

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 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-by -- 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 finish
I'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.
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 spawned, and the light of hell-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, God of the trails untrod,
how it whines in my
heart-strings!
I'm sick to death of your well-groomed gods, 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 spaces,
Of hearts that are wild and brave,

Of populous city places,
Of desolate shores 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-lust,
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 God 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