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The Law of the Yukon

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

“Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane —

Strong for the red rage of battle; sane, for I harry them sore;

Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core;

Swift as the panther in triumph, fierce as the bear in defeat,

Sired of a bulldog parent, steeled in the furnace heat.

Send me the best of your breeding, lend me your chosen ones;

Them will I take to my bosom, them will I call my sons;

Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat;

But the others — the misfits, the failures — I trample under my feet.

Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,

Ye would send me the spawn of your gutters — Go! take back your spawn again.

“Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway;

From my ruthless throne I have ruled alone for a million years and a day;

Hugging my mighty treasure, waiting for man to come,

Till he swept like a turbid torrent, and after him swept — the scum.

The pallid pimp of the deadline, the enervate of the pen,

One by one I weeded them out, for all that I sought was — Men.

One by one I dismayed them, frighting them sore with my glooms;

One by one I betrayed them unto my manifold dooms.

Drowned them like rats in my rivers, starved them like curs on my plains,

Rotted the flesh that was left them, poisoned the blood in their veins;

Burst with my winter upon them, searing forever their sight,

Lashed them with fungus-white faces, whimpering wild in the night;

“Staggering blind through the storm-whirl, stumbling mad through the snow,

Frozen stiff in the ice pack, brittle and bent like a bow;

Featureless, formless, forsaken, scented by wolves in their flight,

Left for the wind to make music through ribs that are glittering white;

Gnawing the back crust of failure, searching the pit of despair,

Crooking the toe in the trigger, trying to patter a prayer;

Going outside with an escort, raving with lips all afoam,

Writing a cheque for a million, driveling feebly of home;

Lost like a louse in the burning … or else in the tented town

Seeking a drunkard’s solace, sinking and sinking down;

Steeped in the slime at the bottom, dead to a decent world.

Lost ’mid the human flotsam, far on the frontier hurled;

In the camp at the bend of the river, with its dozen saloons aglare,

Its gambling dens ariot, its gramophones all ablare;

Crimped with the crimes of a city, sin-ridden and bridled with lies,

In the hush of my mountained vastness, in the flush of my midnight skies.

Plague-spots, yet tools of my purpose, so natheless I suffer them thrive,

Crushing my Weak in their clutches, that only my Strong may survive.

“But the others, the men of my mettle, the men who would ’stablish my fame

Unto its ultimate issue, winning me honour, not shame;

Searching my uttermost valleys, fighting each step as they go,

Shooting the wrath of my rapids, scaling my ramparts of snow;

Ripping the guts of my mountains, looting the beds of my creeks,

Them will I take to my bosom, and speak as a mother speaks.

I am the land that listens, I am the land that broods;

Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods,

Long have I waited lonely, shunned as a thing accurst,

Monstrous, moody, pathetic, the last of the lands and the first;

Visioning campfires at twilight, sad with a longing forlorn,

Feeling my womb o’er-pregnant with the seed of cities unborn.

Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway,

And I wait for the men who will win me — and I will not be won in a day;

And I will not be won by weaklings, subtle, suave and mild,

But by men with the hearts of vikings, and the simple faith of a child;

Desperate, strong and resistless, unthrottled by fear or defeat,

Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat.

“Lofty I stand from each sister land, patient and wearily wise,

With the weight of a world of sadness in my quiet, passionless eyes;

Dreaming alone of a people, dreaming alone of a day,

When men shall not rape my riches, and curse me and go away;

Making a bawd of my bounty, fouling the hand that gave —

Till I rise in my wrath and I sweep on their path and I stamp them into a grave.

Dreaming of men who will bless me, of women esteeming me good,

Of children born in my borders of radiant motherhood,

Of cities leaping to stature, of fame like a flag unfurled,

As I pour the tide of my riches in the eager lap of the world.”

This is the Law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive;

That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive.

Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,

This is the Will of the Yukon, — Lo, how she makes it plain!

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 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 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 Call of the Wild

Have you gazed on the naked grandeur where there’s nothing else to gaze on,

Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,

Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon,

Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?

Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream streaking through it,

Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?

Have you strung your soul to silence? Then for God’s sake go and do it;

Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.

Have you wandered in the wilderness, the sagebrush desolation,

The bunch-grass levels where the cattle graze?

Have you whistled bits of ragtime 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 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 hellfire 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 tonight, oh, God of the trails untrod, how it whines in my heartstrings!

I’m sick to death of your well-groomed gods, your make-believe and your show;

I long for a whiff of bacon and beans, a snug shakedown in the snow;

A trail to break, and a life at stake, and another bout with the foe.

With the raw-ribbed Wild that abhors all life, the Wild that would crush and rend,

I have clinched and closed with the naked North, I have learned to defy and defend;

Shoulder to shoulder we have fought it out — yet the Wild must win in the end.

I have flouted the Wild. I have followed its lure, fearless, familiar, alone;

By all that the battle means and makes I claim that land for mine own;

Yet the Wild must win, and a day will come when I shall be overthrown.

Then when as wolf-dogs fight we’ve fought, the lean wolf-land and I;

Fought and bled till the snows are red under the reeling sky;

Even as lean wolf-dog goes down will I go down and die.

The Pines

We sleep in the sleep of ages, the bleak, barbarian pines;

The grey 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 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 the 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 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 hellfire, 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 labour — 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 labour, doing as I was bid;

Living in camps with menfolk, a lonely and loveless life;

Never knew kiss of sweetheart, never caress of wife.

A brute with brute strength to labour, 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 shy and wild —

Yet how I’d ha’ treasured a woman, and the sweet, warm kiss of a child!

Well, ’tis Thy world, and Thou knowest. I blaspheme and my ways be rude;

But I’ve lived my life as I found it, and I’ve done my best to be good;

I, the primitive toiler, half naked and grimed to the eyes,

Sweating it deep in their ditches, swining it stark in their sties;

Hurling down forests before me, spanning tumultuous streams;

Down in the ditch building o’er me palaces fairer than dreams;

Boring the rock to the ore-bed, driving the road through the fen,

Resolute, dumb, uncomplaining, a man in the world of men.

Master, I’ve filled my contract, wrought in Thy many lands;

Not by my sins wilt Thou judge me, but by the work of my hands.

Master, I’ve done Thy bidding, and the light is low in the west,

And the long, long shift is over … Master, I’ve earned it — Rest.

The Shooting of Dan McGrew

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;

The kid that handles the music box was hitting a jag-time tune;

Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,

And watching his luck was his light-o’-love, the lady that’s known as Lou.

When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and the glare,

There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.

He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and scarcely the strength of a louse,

Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks for the house.

There was none could place the stranger’s face, though we searched ourselves for a clue;

But we drank his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew.

There’s men that somehow just grip your eyes, and hold them hard like a spell;

And such was he, and he looked to me like a man who had lived in hell;

With a face most hair, and the dreary stare of a dog whose day is done,

As he watered the green stuff in his glass, and the drops fell one by one.

Then I got to figgering who he was, and wondering what he’d do,

And I turned my head — and there watching him was the lady that’s known as Lou.

His eyes went rubbering round the room, and he seemed in a kind of daze,

Till at last that old piano fell in the way of his wandering gaze.

The ragtime kid was having a drink; there was no one else on the stool,

So the stranger stumbles across the room, and flops down there like a fool.

In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;

Then he clutched the keys with his talon hands — my God! but that man could play.

Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,

And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear;

With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold,

A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold;

While high overhead, green, yellow and red, the North Lights swept in bars? —

Then you’ve a hunch what the music meant … hunger and night and the stars.

And hunger not of the belly kind, that’s banished with bacon and beans,

But the gnawing hunger of lonely men for a home and all that it means;

For a fireside far from the cares that are, four walls and a roof above;

But oh! so cramful of cosy joy, and crowned with a woman’s love —

A woman dearer than all the world, and true as Heaven is true —

(God! how ghastly she looks through her rouge, — the lady that’s known as Lou.)

Then on a sudden the music changed, so soft that you scarce could hear;

But you felt that your life had been looted clean of all that it once held dear;

That someone had stolen the woman you loved; that her love was a devil’s lie;

That your guts were gone, and the best for you was to crawl away and die.

’Twas the crowning cry of a heart’s despair, and it thrilled you through and through —

“I guess I’ll make it a spread misere,” said Dangerous Dan McGrew.

The music almost died away … then it burst like a pent-up flood;

And it seemed to say, “Repay, repay,” and my eyes were blind with blood.

The thought came back of an ancient wrong, and it stung like a frozen lash,

And the lust awoke to kill, to kill … then the music stopped with a crash,

And the stranger turned, and his eyes they burned in a most peculiar way;

In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;

Then his lips went in in a kind of grin, and he spoke, and his voice was calm,

And “Boys,” says he, “you don’t know me, and none of you care a damn;

But I want to state, and my words are straight, and I’ll bet my poke they’re true,

That one of you is a hound of hell … and that one is Dan McGrew.”

Then I ducked my head, and the lights went out, and two guns blazed in the dark,

And a woman screamed, and the lights went up, and two men lay stiff and stark.

Pitched on his head, and pumped full of lead, was Dangerous Dan McGrew,

While the man from creeks lay clutched to the breast of the lady that’s known as Lou.

These are the simple facts of the case, and I guess I ought to know.

They say that the stranger was crazed with “hooch,” and I’m not denying it’s so.

I’m not so wise as the lawyer guys, but strictly between us two —

The woman that kissed him and — pinched his poke — was the lady that’s known as Lou.

The Cremation of Sam McGee

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.

Why he left his home in the South to roam ’round the Pole, God only knows.

He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;

Though he’d often say in his homely way that “he’d sooner live in hell.”

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.

Talk of your cold! through the parka’s fold it stabbed like a driven nail.

If our eyes we’d close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn’t see;

It wasn’t much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,

And the dogs were fed, and the stars o’erhead were dancing heel and toe,

He turned to me, and “Cap,” says he, “I’ll cash in this trip, I guess;

And if I do, I’m asking you that you won’t refuse my last request.”

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn’t say no; then he says with a sort of moan:

“It’s the cursèd cold, and it’s got right hold till I’m chilled clean through to the bone.

Yet ’tain’t being dead — it’s my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;

So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you’ll cremate my last remains.”

A pal’s last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;

And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.

He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;

And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn’t a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,

With a corpse half hid that I couldn’t get rid, because of a promise given;

It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: “You may tax your brawn and brains,

But you promised true, and it’s up to you to cremate those last remains.”

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.

In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.

In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies round in a ring,

Howled out their woes to the homeless snows — O God! how I loathed that thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;

And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;

The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;

And I’d often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;

It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the “Alice May.”

And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;

Then “Here,” said I, with a sudden cry, “is my cre-ma-tor-eum.”

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;

Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;

The flames just soared, and the furnace roared — such a blaze you seldom see;

And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn’t like to hear him sizzle so;

And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.

It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don’t know why;

And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;

But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;

I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: “I’ll just take a peep inside.

I guess he’s cooked, and it’s time I looked”; … then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;

And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: “Please close that door.

It’s fine in here, but I greatly fear you’ll let in the cold and storm —

Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it’s the first time I’ve been warm.”

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

I cremated Sam McGee.

The Men That Don’t Fit In

There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,

A race that can’t stay still;

So they break the hearts of kith and kin,

And they roam the world at will.

They range the field and they rove the flood,

And they climb the mountain’s crest;

Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,

And they don’t know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;

They are strong and brave and true;

But they’re always tired of the things that are,

And they want the strange and new.

They say: “Could I find my proper groove,

What a deep mark I would make!”

So they chop and change, and each fresh move

Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs

With a brilliant, fitful pace,

It’s steady, quiet, plodding ones

Who win in the lifelong race.

And each forgets that his youth has fled,

Forgets that his prime is past,

Till he stands one day, with a hope that’s dead,

In the glare of the truth at least.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;

He has just done things by half.

Life’s been a jolly good joke on him,

And now is the time to laugh.

Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;

He was never meant to win;

He’s a rolling stone, and it’s bred in the bone;

He’s a man who won’t fit in.

The Rhyme of the Remittance Man

There’s a four-pronged buck a-swinging in the shadow of my cabin,

And it roamed the velvet valley till today;

But I tracked it by the river, and I trailed it in the cover,

And I killed it on the mountain miles away.

Now I’ve had my lazy supper, and the level sun is gleaming

On the water where the silver salmon play;

And I light my little corncob, and I linger, softly dreaming,

In the twilight, of a land that’s far away.

Far away, so faint and far, is flaming London, fevered Paris,

That I fancy I have gained another star;

Far away the din and hurry, far away the sin and worry,

Far away — God knows they cannot be too far.

Gilded galley-slaves of Mammon — how my purse-proud brothers taunt me!

I might have been as well-to-do as they

Had I clutched like them my chances, learned their wisdom, crushed my fancies,

Starved my soul and gone to business every day.

Well, the cherry bends with blossom and the vivid grass is springing,

And the star-like lily nestles in the green;

And the frogs their joys are singing, and my heart in tune is ringing,

And it doesn’t matter what I might have been.

While above the scented pine-gloom, piling heights of golden glory,

The sun-god paints his canvas in the west,

I can couch me deep in clover, I can listen to the story

Of the lazy, lapping water — it is best.

While the trout leaps in the river, and the blue grouse thrills the cover,

And the frozen snow betrays the panther’s track,

And the robin greets the dayspring with the rapture of a lover,

I am happy, and I’ll nevermore go back.

For I know I’d just be longing for the little old log cabin,

With the morning glory clinging to the door,

Till I loathed the city places, cursed the care on all the faces,

Turned my back on lazar London evermore.

So send me far from Lombard Street, and write me down a failure;

Put a little in my purse and leave me free.

Say: “He turned from Fortune’s offering to follow up a pale lure,

He is one of us no longer — let him be.”

I am one of you no longer; by the trails my feet have broken,

The dizzy peaks I’ve scaled, the campfire’s glow;

By the lonely seas I’ve sailed in — yea, the final word is spoken,

I am signed and sealed to nature. Be it so.

The Low-Down White

This is the payday up at the mines, when the bearded brutes come down;

There’s money to burn in the streets tonight, so I’ve sent my klooch to town,

With a haggard face and ribband of red entwined in her hair of brown.

And I know at the dawn she’ll come reeling home with the bottles, one, two, three —

One for herself, to drown her shame, and two big bottles for me,

To make me forget the thing I am and the man I used to be.

To make me forget the brand of the dog, as I crouch in this hideous place;

To make me forget once I kindled the light of love in a lady’s face,

Where even the squalid Siwash now holds me a black disgrace.

Oh, I have guarded my secret well! And who would dream as I speak

In a tribal tongue like a rogue unhung, ’mid the ranch-house filth and reek,

I could roll to bed with a Latin phrase and rise with a verse of Greek?

Yet I was a senior prizeman once, and the pride of a college eight;

Called to the bar — my friends were true! but they could not keep me straight;

Then came the divorce, and I went abroad and “died” on the River Plate.

But I’m not dead yet; though with half a lung there isn’t time to spare,

And I hope that the year will see me out, and, thank God, no one will care —

Save maybe the little slim Siwash girl with the rose of shame in her hair.

She will come with the dawn, and the dawn is near; I can see its evil glow,

Like a corpse-light seen through a frosty pane in a night of want and woe;

And yonder she comes by the bleak bull-pines, swift staggering through the snow.

The Tramps

Can you recall, dear comrade, when we tramped God’s land together,

And we sang the old, old Earth-song, for our youth was very sweet;

When we drank and fought and lusted, as we mocked at tie and tether,

And the road to Anywhere, the wide world at our feet —

Along the road to Anywhere, when each day had its story;

When the time was yet our vassal, and life’s jest was still unstale;

When peace unfathomed filled our hearts as, bathed in amber glory,

Along the road to Anywhere we watched the sunsets pale?

Alas! the road to Anywhere is pitfalled with disaster;

There’s hunger, want, and weariness, yet O we loved it so!

As on we tramped exultantly, and no man was our master,

And no man guessed what dreams were ours, as, swinging heel and toe,

We tramped the road to Anywhere, the magic road to Anywhere,

The tragic road to Anywhere, such dear, dim years ago.

L’Envoi

You who have lived in the land,

You who have trusted the trail,

You who are strong to withstand,

You who are swift to assail:

Songs have I sung to beguile,

Vintage of desperate years

Hard as a harlot’s smile,

Bitter as unshed tears.

Little of joy or mirth,

Little of ease I sing;

Sagas of men of earth

Humanly suffering,

Such as you all have done;

Savagely faring forth,

Sons of the midnight sun,

Argonauts of the North.

Far in the land God forgot

Glimmers the lure of your trail;

Still in your lust are you taught

Even to win is to fail.

Still you must follow and fight

Under the vampire wing;

There is the long, long night

Hoping and vanquishing.

Husbandman of the Wild,

Reaping a barren gain;

Scourged by desire, reconciled

Unto disaster and pain;

These, my songs, are for you,

You who are seared with the brand.

God knows I have tried to be true;

Please God you will understand.

The March of the Dead

The cruel war was over — oh, the triumph was so sweet!

We watched the troops returning, through our tears;

There was triumph, triumph, triumph down the scarlet glittering street,

And you scarce could hear the music for the cheers.

And you scarce could see the house-tops for the flags that flew between;

The bells were pealing madly to the sky;

And everyone was shouting for the Soldiers of the Queen,

And the glory of an age was passing by.

And then there came a shadow, swift and sudden, dark and drear;

The bells were silent, not an echo stirred.

The flags were drooping sullenly, the men forgot to cheer;

We waited, and we never spoke a word.

The sky grew darker, darker, till from out the gloomy rack

There came a voice that checked the heart with dread:

“Tear down, tear down your bunting now, and hang up sable black;

They are coming — it’s the Army of the Dead.”

They were coming, they were coming, gaunt and ghastly, sad and slow;

They were coming, all the crimson wrecks of pride;

With faces seared, and cheeks red smeared, and haunting eyes of woe,

And clotted holes the khaki couldn’t hide.

Oh, the clammy brow of anguish! the livid, foam-flecked lips!

The reeling ranks of ruin swept along!

The limb that trailed, the hand that failed, the bloody fingertips!

And oh, the dreary rhythm of their song!

“They left us on the veldt-side, but we felt we couldn’t stop

On this, our England’s crowning festal day;

We’re the men of Magersfontein, we’re the men of Spion Kop,

Colenso — we’re the men who had to pay.

We’re the men who paid the blood-price. Shall the grave be all our gain?

You owe us. Long and heavy is the score.

Then cheer us for our glory now, and cheer us for our pain,

And cheer us as ye never cheered before.”

The folks were white and stricken, and each tongue seemed weighted with lead;

Each heart was clutched in hollow hand of ice;

And every eye was staring at the horror of the dead,

The pity of the men who paid the price.

They were come, were come to mock us, in the first flush of our peace;

Through writhing lips their teeth were all agleam;

They were coming in their thousands — oh, would they never cease!

I closed my eyes, and then — it was a dream.

There was triumph, triumph, triumph down the scarlet gleaming street;

The town was mad; a man was like a boy.

A thousand flags were flaming where the sky and city meet;

A thousand bells were thundering the joy.

There was music, mirth and sunshine; but some eyes shone with regret;

And while we stun with cheers our homing braves,

O God, in Thy great mercy, let us nevermore forget

The graves they left behind, the bitter graves.