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قراءة كتاب The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses

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‏اللغة: English
The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses

The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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Yukon
    I wanted the gold, and I sought it,

   The Heart of the Sourdough
    There where the mighty mountains bare their fangs unto the moon,

   The Three Voices
    The waves have a story to tell me,

   The Law of the Yukon
    This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain,

   The Parson's Son
    This is the song of the parson's son, as he squats in his shack alone,

   The Call of the Wild
    Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there's nothing else to gaze on,

   The Lone Trail
    Ye who know the Lone Trail fain would follow it,

   The Pines
    We sleep in the sleep of ages, the bleak, barbarian pines,

   The Lure of Little Voices
    There's a cry from out the loneliness — oh, listen, Honey, listen!

   The Song of the Wage-Slave
    When the long, long day is over, and the Big Boss gives me my pay,

   Grin
    If you're up against a bruiser and you're getting knocked about,

   The Shooting of Dan McGrew
    A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon,

   The Cremation of Sam McGee
    There are strange things done in the midnight sun,

   My Madonna
    I haled me a woman from the street,

   Unforgotten
    I know a garden where the lilies gleam,

   The Reckoning
    It's fine to have a blow-out in a fancy restaurant,

   Quatrains
    One said:  Thy life is thine to make or mar,

   The Men That Don't Fit In
    There's a race of men that don't fit in,

   Music in the Bush
    O'er the dark pines she sees the silver moon,

   The Rhyme of the Remittance Man
    There's a four-pronged buck a-swinging in the shadow of my cabin,

   The Low-Down White
    This is the pay-day up at the mines, when the bearded brutes come down,

   The Little Old Log Cabin
    When a man gets on his uppers in a hard-pan sort of town,

   The Younger Son
    If you leave the gloom of London and you seek a glowing land,

   The March of the Dead
    The cruel war was over — oh, the triumph was so sweet,

   "Fighting Mac"
    A pistol shot rings round and round the world,

   The Woman and the Angel
    An angel was tired of heaven, as he lounged in the golden street,

   The Rhyme of the Restless Ones
    We couldn't sit and study for the law,

   New Year's Eve
    It's cruel cold on the water-front, silent and dark and drear,

   Comfort
    Say!  You've struck a heap of trouble,

   The Harpy
    There was a woman, and she was wise; woefully wise was she,

   Premonition
    'Twas a year ago, and the moon was bright,

   The Tramps
    Can you recall, dear comrade, when we tramped God's land together,

   L'Envoi
    You who have lived in the land,





The 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, 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.





The Heart of the Sourdough

   There where the mighty mountains bare their fangs unto the moon,
   There where the sullen sun-dogs glare in the snow-bright, bitter noon,
   And the glacier-glutted streams sweep down at the clarion call of June.

   There where the livid tundras keep their tryst with the tranquil snows;
   There where the silences are spawned, and the light of hell-fire flows
   Into the bowl of the midnight sky, violet, amber and rose.

   There where the rapids churn and roar, and the ice-floes bellowing run;
   Where the tortured, twisted rivers of blood rush to the setting sun —
   I've packed my kit and I'm going, boys, ere another day is done.


   I knew it would call, or soon or late, as it calls the whirring wings;
   It's the olden lure, it's the golden lure,
     it's the lure of the timeless things,
   And to-night, oh, God of the

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