Page:The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses.djvu/29



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 dead-line, 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.