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 graveI 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 cussidest land I know,
From the big dizzy mountains that screen it to the deep death like valleys below
Some say God was tired when he made it, some say it's a fine land to shun;maybe,
But there are some who would trade it for no land on Earth, and I'm one
You come to get rich, that's a good reason You feel like an excile at first, you hate it like Hell for a season and then you're worse than the worst
It grips you like some kind of sinning, it twists you from foe to a friend
It seems it's been since the Beginning, it seems it will be till the end
I've stood in some mighty mouthed hollow that's plum 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 thought I surely was dreaming with the peace of the World piled on top
The summer, no sweeter was ever, the sunshining woods all a thrill, the grailing 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 farnessOh 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 bludgions you dum
The snows that are older than history, the woods where the wierd shadows slant,the stillness, the moonlight, the mysteryI've bade them 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 airing 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 how it beckons and beckonsAnd I want to go back and I willThey'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 againI'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 sight
So me for the Yukon once more There's gold and it's haunting and taunting
It's luring me on as a goal
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 that silence has leased,it's the beauty that thrills me with wonder,it's the stillness that fills me with peace