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