Something from the last gold rush...

[jtryka]

The Spell of the Yukon

 

By Robert W. Service

 

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.

 

 

[Hoot]

Service has been a long time favorite. I am especially fond of the Cremation of Sam McGee. Superb.

 

Hoot

[spy88]

Back in the late 60's when I first read this poem, I swore that Alaska was where I was going to go to homestead and work a stream or river for placer gold with a dredge. To this day, I still am not sure what it was that kept me from getting there.

 

The last stanza is the most "potent" to me as I have found raw gold with my dredge in Idaho and Oregon. If any of you have seen the movie "Pale Rider" with Clint Eastwood, you may remember the miner that finally got that big boulder out of the way and found a bowling ball sized nugget. When I saw that for the first time, I remember the hair standing up on my arms from having felt the same way as he did. Believe me, there is nothing quite like it.

 

David

[jtryka]

Yes, The Cremation of Sam McGee has been a favorite of mine since high school. I am not sure why, but Service's poems have a unique attraction to those of us who might otherwise not be fond of poetry.