The Spell of the Yukon | Page 5

Law of the Yukon
This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain:
"Send not
your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane -- Strong
for the red rage of battle; sane for I harry them sore; Send me men girt
for the combat, men who are grit to the core; Swift as the panther in
triumph, fierce as the bear in defeat, Sired of a bulldog parent, steeled
in the furnace heat.
Send me the best of your breeding, lend me your
chosen ones; Them will I take to my bosom, them will I call my sons;

Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat;
But the others -- the misfits, the failures -- I trample under my feet.
Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain, Ye
would send me the spawn of your gutters -- Go! take back your spawn
again.
"Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway;
From my

ruthless throne I have ruled alone for a million years and a day;
Hugging my mighty treasure, waiting for man to come,
Till he swept
like a turbid torrent, and after him swept -- the scum. The pallid pimp
of the dead-line, the enervate of the pen,
One by one I weeded them
out, for all that I sought was -- Men. One by one I dismayed them,
frighting them sore with my glooms; One by one I betrayed them unto
my manifold dooms.
Drowned them like rats in my rivers, starved
them like curs on my plains, Rotted the flesh that was left them,
poisoned the blood in their veins; Burst with my winter upon them,
searing forever their sight, Lashed them with fungus-white faces,
whimpering wild in the night;
"Staggering blind through the storm-whirl, stumbling mad through the
snow, Frozen stiff in the ice-pack, brittle and bent like a bow;

Featureless, formless, forsaken, scented by wolves in their flight, Left
for the wind to make music through ribs that are glittering white;
Gnawing the black crust of failure, searching the pit of despair,
Crooking the toe in the trigger, trying to patter a prayer; Going outside
with an escort, raving with lips all afoam,
Writing a cheque for a
million, driveling feebly of home;
Lost like a louse in the burning . . .
or else in the tented town Seeking a drunkard's solace, sinking and
sinking down;
Steeped in the slime at the bottom, dead to a decent
world, Lost 'mid the human flotsam, far on the frontier hurled;
In the
camp at the bend of the river, with its dozen saloons aglare, Its
gambling dens ariot, its gramophones all ablare;
Crimped with the
crimes of a city, sin-ridden and bridled with lies, In the hush of my
mountained vastness, in the flush of my midnight skies. Plague-spots,
yet tools of my purpose, so natheless I suffer them thrive, Crushing my
Weak in their clutches, that only my Strong may survive.
"But the others, the men of my mettle, the men who would 'stablish my
fame Unto its ultimate issue, winning me honor, not shame;

Searching my uttermost valleys, fighting each step as they go, Shooting
the wrath of my rapids, scaling my ramparts of snow; Ripping the guts
of my mountains, looting the beds of my creeks, Them will I take to my
bosom, and speak as a mother speaks. I am the land that listens, I am

the land that broods;
Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and
woods.
Long have I waited lonely, shunned as a thing accurst,

Monstrous, moody, pathetic, the last of the lands and the first;
Visioning camp-fires at twilight, sad with a longing forlorn, Feeling my
womb o'er-pregnant with the seed of cities unborn. Wild and wide are
my borders, stern as death is my sway,
And I wait for the men who
will win me -- and I will not be won in a day; And I will not be won by
weaklings, subtle, suave and mild, But by men with the hearts of
vikings, and the simple faith of a child; Desperate, strong and resistless,
unthrottled by fear or defeat, Them will I gild with my treasure, them
will I glut with my meat.
"Lofty I stand from each sister land, patient and wearily wise, With the
weight of a world of sadness in my quiet, passionless eyes; Dreaming
alone of a people, dreaming alone of a day,
When men shall not rape
my riches, and curse me and go away; Making a bawd of my bounty,
fouling the hand that gave --
Till I rise in my wrath and I sweep on
their path
and I stamp them into a grave.
Dreaming of men who will
bless me, of women esteeming me good, Of children born in my
borders of radiant motherhood,
Of cities leaping to stature, of fame
like