Songs of a Sourdough Robert W. Service (e book free reading .txt) 📖

“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!

This is the song of the parson’s son, as he squats in his shack alone,
On the wild, weird nights when the Northern Lights shoot up from the frozen zone,
And it’s sixty below, and couched in the snow the hungry huskies moan.

“I’m one of the Arctic brotherhood, I’m an old-time pioneer.
I came with the first⁠—O God! how I’ve cursed this Yukon⁠—but still I’m here.
I’ve sweated athirst in its summer heat, I’ve frozen and starved in its cold;
I’ve followed my dreams by its thousand streams, I’ve toiled and moiled for its gold.

“Look at my eyes⁠—been snow-blind twice; look where my foot’s half gone;
And that gruesome scar on my left cheek where the frost-fiend bit to the bone.
Each one a brand of this devil’s land, where I’ve played and I’ve lost the game,
A broken wreck with a craze for ‘hooch,’ and never a cent to my name.

“This mining is only a gamble, the worst is as good as the best;
I was in with the bunch and I might have come out right on top with the rest;
With Cormack, Ladue and Macdonald⁠—O God! but it’s hell to think
Of the thousands and thousands I’ve squandered on cards and women and drink.

“In the early days we were just a few, and we hunted and fished around,
Nor dreamt by our lonely campfires of the wealth that lay under the ground.
We traded in skins and whiskey, and I’ve often slept under the shade
Of that lone birch-tree on Bonanza, where the first big find was made.

“We were just like a great big family, and every man had his squaw,
And we lived such a wild, free, fearless life beyond the pale of the law;
Till sudden there came a whisper, and it maddened us every man,
And I got in on Bonanza before the big rush began.

“Oh, those Dawson days, and the sin and the blaze, and the town all open wide!
(If God made me in His likeness, sure He let the devil inside.)
But we all were mad, both the good and the bad, and as for the women, well⁠—
No spot on the map in so short a space has hustled more souls to hell.

“Money was just like dirt there, easy to get and to spend.
I was all caked in on a dance-hall jade, but she shook me in the end.
It put me queer, and for near a year I never drew sober breath,
Till I found myself in the bughouse ward with a claim staked out on death.

“Twenty years in the Yukon, struggling along its creeks;
Roaming its giant valleys, scaling its godlike peaks;
Bathed in its fiery sunsets, fighting its fiendish cold,
Twenty years in the Yukon⁠ ⁠… twenty years⁠—and I’m old.

“Old and weak, but no matter, there’s ‘hooch’ in the bottle still.
I’ll hitch up the dogs tomorrow, and mush down the trail to Bill.
It’s so long dark, and I’m lonesome⁠—I’ll just lay down on the bed,
Tomorrow I’ll go⁠ ⁠… tomorrow⁠ ⁠… I guess I’ll play on the red.

“… Come, Kit, your pony is saddled. I’m waiting, dear, in the court⁠ ⁠…
… Minnie, you devil, I’ll kill you if you skip with that flossy sport⁠ ⁠…
… How much does it go to the pan, Bill?⁠ ⁠… play up, School, and play the game⁠ ⁠…
… Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name⁠ ⁠…”

This was the song of the parson’s son, as he lay in his bunk alone,
Ere the fire went out and the cold crept in, and his blue lips ceased to moan,
And the hunger-maddened malamutes had torn him flesh from bone.

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 the 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