"
The Spell of the Yukon.
[Illustration: ROBERT SERVICE.]
Everything that the great northland holds was dear to him and clear to
him and near to him. He knew it all as intimately as a child knows his
own backyard. He makes it as dear and near and clear too, to those who
read:
"The summer--no sweeter was ever,
The sunshiny woods all athrill;
The grayling aleap in the river,
The bighorn asleep on the hill;
The strong life that never knows harness,
The wilds where the caribou call;
The freedom, the freshness, the farness;
O God! how I'm stuck on it all!"
The Spell of the Yukon.
Virile as the mountains that he has neighbored with; clean as the snows
that have blinded his eyes, and made beautiful the valleys; subdued to
love of God through the height and the might of all that he sees, with
a vigor that shakes one awake, he speaks, not forgetting the pines; for
the pines are kith and kin to the mountains and the snows:
"Wind of the East, wind of the West, wandering to and fro,
Chant your hymns in our topmost limbs, that the sons of men may know
That the peerless pine was the first to come, and the pine will be
the last to go.
"Sun, moon, and stars give answer; shall we not staunchly stand
Even as now, forever, wards of the wilder strand,
Sentinels of the stillness, lords of the last, lone land?"
The Spell of the Yukon.
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