The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses

Name: The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses
Author: Robert W. Service

by Robert W. Service

Pages: about 46
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 51 min at 250 wpm

Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 28 min at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

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.

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The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses

From the opening

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