The Spell of the Yukon | Page 7

bunch-grass levels where the cattle graze?
Have you whistled bits of

rag-time at the end of all creation, And learned to know the desert's
little ways?
Have you camped upon the foothills, have you galloped
o'er the ranges, Have you roamed the arid sun-lands through and
through?
Have you chummed up with the mesa? Do you know its
moods and changes? Then listen to the Wild -- it's calling you.
Have you known the Great White Silence, not a snow-gemmed twig
aquiver? (Eternal truths that shame our soothing lies.)
Have you
broken trail on snowshoes? mushed your huskies up the river, Dared
the unknown, led the way, and clutched the prize?
Have you marked
the map's void spaces, mingled with the mongrel races, Felt the savage
strength of brute in every thew?
And though grim as hell the worst is,
can you round it off with curses? Then hearken to the Wild -- it's
wanting you.
Have you suffered, starved and triumphed,
groveled down, yet
grasped at glory,
Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole?
"Done
things" just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story, Seeing through
the nice veneer the naked soul?
Have you seen God in His splendors,
heard the text that nature renders? (You'll never hear it in the family
pew.)
The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things
-- Then listen to the Wild -- it's calling you.
They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with their
preaching, They have soaked you in convention through and through;

They have put you in a showcase; you're a credit to their teaching --
But can't you hear the Wild? -- it's calling you.
Let us probe the silent
places, let us seek what luck betide us; Let us journey to a lonely land I
know.
There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam to
guide us, And the Wild is calling, calling . . . let us go.
The Lone Trail
Ye who know the Lone Trail fain would follow it,
Though it lead to
glory or the darkness of the pit.
Ye who take the Lone Trail, bid your
love good-by;
The Lone Trail, the Lone Trail follow till you die.

The trails of the world be countless, and most of the trails be tried; You
tread on the heels of the many, till you come where the ways divide;
And one lies safe in the sunlight, and the other is dreary and wan, Yet
you look aslant at the Lone Trail, and the Lone Trail lures you on. And
somehow you're sick of the highway, with its noise and its easy needs,
And you seek the risk of the by-way, and you reck not where it leads.
And sometimes it leads to the desert, and the tongue swells out of the
mouth, And you stagger blind to the mirage, to die in the mocking
drouth. And sometimes it leads to the mountain, to the light of the lone
camp-fire, And you gnaw your belt in the anguish of hunger-goaded
desire. And sometimes it leads to the Southland, to the swamp where
the orchid glows, And you rave to your grave with the fever,
and they
rob the corpse for its clothes.
And sometimes it leads to the Northland,
and the scurvy softens your bones, And your flesh dints in like putty,
and you spit out your teeth like stones. And sometimes it leads to a
coral reef in the wash of a weedy sea, And you sit and stare at the
empty glare where the gulls wait greedily. And sometimes it leads to an
Arctic trail,
and the snows where your torn feet freeze,
And you
whittle away the useless clay, and crawl on your hands and knees.
Often it leads to the dead-pit; always it leads to pain;
By the bones of
your brothers ye know it, but oh, to follow you're fain. By your bones
they will follow behind you,
till the ways of the world are made plain.
Bid good-by to sweetheart, bid good-by to friend;
The Lone Trail, the
Lone Trail follow to the end.
Tarry not, and fear not, chosen of the
true;
Lover of the Lone Trail, the Lone Trail waits for you.
The Pines
We sleep in the sleep of ages, the bleak, barbarian pines;
The gray
moss drapes us like sages, and closer we lock our lines, And deeper we
clutch through the gelid gloom where never a sunbeam shines.
On the flanks of the storm-gored ridges are our black battalions massed;
We surge in a host to the sullen coast, and we sing in the ocean blast;
From empire of sea to empire of snow we grip our empire fast.

To the niggard lands were we driven, 'twixt desert and floes are we
penned; To us was the Northland given, ours to stronghold and defend;
Ours till the world be riven in the crash of the