Spell of the Yukon

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 depth-like 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 that would trade it

For no land owner and I'm one.

You come to get rich that's a good reason

You feel like an exile at first

You hate it like hell for a season

And then you're 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 thought that I surely was dreaming

With the peace of the world piled on top.

The summer no sweeter was ever

The sunshiny woods all a thrill

The grayling a leap in the river

The bighorn asleep on a hill.

The strong life that never knows harness

The wilds where the caribou call

The freshness the freedom the farness

Oh 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 myst'ry

I'd bade them goodbye 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 how 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 damn sight

So me for the Yukon once more.

There's gold and its 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 broadland way up yonder

It's the forest where silence has lease

It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder

It's the stillness that fills me with peace...