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Robert W Service - The Spell of the Yukon
Work rating: Medium

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 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.
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