"
And how the warning against sin hurtles its
way into your soul; its grip; its age; its power:
"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."
The Spell of the Yukon.
Sin is like that. Service is right! Sin lures, and calls under the
guise of beauty. But sin, as John Masefield shows in "The Everlasting
Mercy," is ugly. In the modern word of the street "Sin will get you."
Service says the same thing in "It grips you."
GOD AND HEAVEN
Maybe you have never thought of God as the God of the trails and
Alaskan reaches, but Service makes you see him as "The God of the
trails untrod" in "The Heart of the Sourdough." He does not leave God
out. Nor do these rough men of the avalanches, the frozen rivers, the
gold trails, which are death trails. Indeed, these are the very men who
know God, for do not their "Lives just hang by a hair"?
"I knew it would call, or soon or late, as it calls the whirring
wings;
It's the olden lure, it's the golden lure, it's the lure of the
timeless things,
And to-night, O, God of the trails untrod, how it whines in
my heart-strings!"
The Spell of the Yukon.
This God leads to "The Land of Beyond," the heaven of the gold seeker:
"Thank God! there is always a Land of Beyond
For us who are true to the trail;
A vision to seek, a beckoning peak,
A farness that never will fail;
A pride in our soul that mocks at a goal,
A manhood that irks at a bond,
And try how we will, unattainable still,
Behold it, our Land of Beyond!"
Rhymes of a Rolling Stone.
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