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 cursedest 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 a thrill
The gray ling a leap 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 fairness
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 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, 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 great site
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

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