The Spell of the Yukon | Page 8

utter end;
Ours from the bleak beginning, through the aeons of death-like sleep;
Ours from the shock when the naked rock was hurled from the hissing
deep; Ours through the twilight ages of weary glacier creep.
Wind of the East, Wind of the West, wandering to and fro,
Chant
your songs in our topmost boughs, that the sons of men may know The
peerless pine was the first to come, and the pine will be last to go!
We pillar the halls of perfumed gloom; we plume where the eagles soar;
The North-wind swoops from the brooding Pole,
and our ancients
crash and roar;
But where one falls from the crumbling walls shoots
up a hardy score.
We spring from the gloom of the canyon's womb; in the valley's lap we
lie; From the white foam-fringe, where the breakers cringe
to the
peaks that tusk the sky,
We climb, and we peer in the crag-locked
mere that gleams like a golden eye.
Gain to the verge of the hog-back ridge where the vision ranges free:
Pines and pines and the shadow of pines as far as the eye can see; A
steadfast legion of stalwart knights in dominant empery.
Sun, moon and stars give answer; shall we not staunchly stand, Even as
now, forever, wards of the wilder strand,
Sentinels of the stillness,
lords of the last, lone land?
The Lure of Little Voices
There's a cry from out the loneliness -- oh, listen, Honey, listen! Do you
hear it, do you fear it, you're a-holding of me so? You're a-sobbing in
your sleep, dear, and your lashes, how they glisten -- Do you hear the
Little Voices all a-begging me to go?

All a-begging me to leave you. Day and night they're pleading, praying,
On the North-wind, on the West-wind, from the peak and from the
plain; Night and day they never leave me -- do you know what they are
saying? "He was ours before you got him, and we want him once
again."
Yes, they're wanting me, they're haunting me, the awful lonely places;
They're whining and they're whimpering as if each had a soul; They're
calling from the wilderness, the vast and God-like spaces, The stark and
sullen solitudes that sentinel the Pole.
They miss my little camp-fires, ever brightly, bravely gleaming In the
womb of desolation, where was never man before;
As comradeless I
sought them, lion-hearted, loving, dreaming, And they hailed me as a
comrade, and they loved me evermore.
And now they're all a-crying, and it's no use me denying;
The spell of
them is on me and I'm helpless as a child;
My heart is aching, aching,
but I hear them, sleeping, waking; It's the Lure of Little Voices, it's the
mandate of the Wild.
I'm afraid to tell you, Honey, I can take no bitter leaving; But softly in
the sleep-time from your love I'll steal away. Oh, it's cruel, dearie, cruel,
and it's God knows how I'm grieving; But His loneliness is calling, and
He knows I must obey.
The Song of the Wage-Slave
When the long, long day is over, and the Big Boss gives me my pay, I
hope that it won't be hell-fire, as some of the parsons say. And I hope
that it won't be heaven, with some of the parsons I've met -- All I want
is just quiet, just to rest and forget.
Look at my face, toil-furrowed;
look at my calloused hands; Master, I've done Thy bidding, wrought in
Thy many lands -- Wrought for the little masters, big-bellied they be,
and rich; I've done their desire for a daily hire, and I die like a dog in a
ditch. I have used the strength Thou hast given, Thou knowest I did not
shirk; Threescore years of labor -- Thine be the long day's work.
And

now, Big Master, I'm broken and bent and twisted and scarred, But I've
held my job, and Thou knowest, and Thou will not judge me hard.
Thou knowest my sins are many, and often I've played the fool --
Whiskey and cards and women, they made me the devil's tool. I was
just like a child with money; I flung it away with a curse, Feasting a
fawning parasite, or glutting a harlot's purse;
Then back to the woods
repentant, back to the mill or the mine, I, the worker of workers,
everything in my line.
Everything hard but headwork (I'd no more
brains than a kid), A brute with brute strength to labor, doing as I was
bid;
Living in camps with men-folk, a lonely and loveless life;

Never knew kiss of sweetheart, never caress of wife.
A brute with
brute strength to labor, and they were so far above -- Yet I'd gladly
have gone to the gallows for one little look of Love. I, with the strength
of two men, savage and