Page:The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses.djvu/19



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.