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<h2>The Spell of the Yukon</h2>
<p>I wanted the gold, and I sought it,<br/>
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.<br/>
Was it famine or scurvy — I fought it;<br/>
I hurled my youth into a grave.<br/>
I wanted the gold, and I got it —<br/>
Came out with a fortune last fall, —<br/>
Yet somehow life's not what I thought it,<br/>
And somehow the gold isn't all.<br/>
<br/>
No! There's the land. (Have you seen it?)<br/>
It's the cussedest land that I know,<br/>
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it<br/>
To the deep, deathlike valleys below.<br/>
Some say God was tired when He made it;<br/>
Some say it's a fine land to shun;<br/>
Maybe; but there's some as would trade it<br/>
For no land on earth — and I'm one.<br/>
<br/>
You come to get rich (damned good reason);<br/>
You feel like an exile at first;<br/>
You hate it like hell for a season,<br/>
And then you are worse than the worst.<br/>
It grips you like some kinds of sinning;<br/>
It twists you from foe to a friend;<br/>
It seems it's been since the beginning;<br/>
It seems it will be to the end.<br/>
<br/>
I've stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow<br/>
That's plumb-full of hush to the brim;<br/>
I've watched the big, husky sun wallow<br/>
In crimson and gold, and grow dim,<br/>
Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming,<br/>
And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop;<br/>
And I've thought that I surely was dreaming,<br/>
With the peace o' the world piled on top.<br/>
<br/>
The summer — no sweeter was ever;<br/>
The sunshiny woods all athrill;<br/>
The grayling aleap in the river,<br/>
The bighorn asleep on the hill.<br/>
The strong life that never knows harness;<br/>
The wilds where the caribou call;<br/>
The freshness, the freedom, the farness —<br/>
O God! how I'm stuck on it all.<br/>
<br/>
The winter! the brightness that blinds you,<br/>
The white land locked tight as a drum,<br/>
The cold fear that follows and finds you,<br/>
The silence that bludgeons you dumb.<br/>
The snows that are older than history,<br/>
The woods where the weird shadows slant;<br/>
The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery,<br/>
I've bade 'em good-by — but I can't.<br/>
<br/>
There's a land where the mountains are nameless,<br/>
And the rivers all run God knows where;<br/>
There are lives that are erring and aimless,<br/>
And deaths that just hang by a hair;<br/>
There are hardships that nobody reckons;<br/>
There are valleys unpeopled and still;<br/>
There's a land — oh, it beckons and beckons,<br/>
And I want to go back — and I will.<br/>
<br/>
They're making my money diminish;<br/>
I'm sick of the taste of champagne.<br/>
Thank God! when I'm skinned to a finish<br/>
I'll pike to the Yukon again.<br/>
I'll fight — and you bet it's no sham-fight;<br/>
It's hell! — but I've been there before;<br/>
And it's better than this by a damsite —<br/>
So me for the Yukon once more.<br/>
<br/>
There's gold, and it's haunting and haunting;<br/>
It's luring me on as of old;<br/>
Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting<br/>
So much as just finding the gold.<br/>
It's the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder,<br/>
It's the forests where silence has lease;<br/>
It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder,<br/>
It's the stillness that fills me with peace.<br/></p>
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