The Parson'S Son

"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 PARSON'S SON

_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 camp-fires 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 god-like 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 to-morrow, and mush down the trail to Bill.

It's so long dark, and I'm lonesome--I'll just lay down on the bed,

To-morrow I'll go ... to-morrow ... I guess I'll play on the red.