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