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Robert W Service - I`m Scared of It All
Work rating: Low

I`m scared of it all, God`s truth! so I am; 
It`s too big and brutal for me. 
My nerve`s on the raw and I don`t give a damn 
For all the "hoorah" that I see. 
I`m pinned between subway and overhead train, 
Where automobillies swoop down: 
Oh, I want to go back to the timber again — 
I`m scared of the terrible town. 

I want to go back to my lean, ashen plains; 
My rivers that flash into foam; 
My ultimate valleys where solitude reigns; 
My trail from Fort Churchill to Nome. 
My forests packed full of mysterious gloom, 
My ice-fields agrind and aglare: 
The city is deadfalled with danger and doom — 
I know that I`m safer up there. 

I watch the wan faces that flash in the street; 
All kinds and all classes I see. 
Yet never a one in the million I meet, 
Has the smile of a comrade for me. 
Just jaded and panting like dogs in a pack; 
Just tensed and intent on the goal: 
O God! but I`m lonesome — I wish I was back, 
Up there in the land of the Pole. 

I wish I was back on the Hunger Plateaus, 
And seeking the lost caribou; 
I wish I was up where the Coppermine flows 
To the kick of my little canoe. 
I`d like to be far on some weariful shore, 
In the Land of the Blizzard and Bear; 
Oh, I wish I was snug in the Arctic once more, 
For I know I am safer up there! 

I prowl in the canyons of dismal unrest; 
I cringe — I`m so weak and so small. 
I can`t get my bearings, I`m crushed and oppressed 
With the haste and the waste of it all. 
The slaves and the madman, the lust and the sweat, 
The fear in the faces I see; 
The getting, the spending, the fever, the fret — 
It`s too bleeding cruel for me. 

I feel it`s all wrong, but I can`t tell you why — 
The palace, the hovel next door; 
The insolent towers that sprawl to the sky, 
The crush and the rush and the roar. 
I`m trapped like a fox and I fear for my pelt; 
I cower in the crash and the glare; 
Oh, I want to be back in the avalanche belt, 
For I know that it`s safer up there! 

I`m scared of it all: Oh, afar I can hear 
The voice of my solitudes call! 
We`re nothing but brute with a little veneer, 
And nature is best after all. 
There`s tumult and terror abroad in the street; 
There`s menace and doom in the air; 
I`ve got to get back to my thousand-mile beat; 
The trail where the cougar and silver-tip meet; 
The snows and the camp-fire, with wolves at my feet; 
       Good-bye, for it`s safer up there. 

To be forming good habits up there; 
To be starving on rabbits up there; 
In your hunger and woe, 
Though it`s sixty below, 
Oh, I know that it`s safer up there!
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