THE SPELL OF THE YUKON
(FAR AWAY FEELING)
Anita Kerr - Robert Service
(Recorded 21 March 1961)
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 a 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 death-like 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 that would trade it
for no land on earth, and I'm one.
You come to get rich - that's a good reason
You feel like an exile at first -
you're hated like hell for a season.
And then you're worse than the worst.
It grips you like some kind 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 mouth-hollow
that's plumbfull 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 thought that I surely was dreaming
with the peace of the world piled on top.
The summer no sweeter was ever,
the sunshiny woods all a-thrill,
the grayling a-leap in the river;
the bighorn asleep on a hill.
The strong life that never knows harness.
The wilds where the caribou call.
The freshness, the freedom, the farness.
Oh God, how I'm stuck on it all!
The winter, the brightness that blinds you;
The white land locked tight as a drum -
The cold fear that follows and finds you;
The silence that bludgeons you dumb.
The snows that are older than history;
The woods where the weird shadows slant;
The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery -
I've bade them goodbye, but I can't.
There's a land where the mountains are nameless,
and the rivers all run - God knows where.
There are lives that are erring and aimless,
and deaths that just hang by a hair.
There are hardships that nobody reckons.
There are valleys unpeopled and still.
There's a land, oh, how it beckons and beckons,
and I want to go back. And I will.
They're making my money diminish;
I'm sick of the taste of champagne.
Thank God, when I'm skinned to a finish -
I'll pike to the Yukon again.
I'll fight, and you bet it's no sham fight -
It's hell! But I've been there before,
and it's better than this by a great sight.
So, me for the Yukon, once more.
There's gold, and its haunting and haunting.
It's luring me on as of old.
Yet, it isn't the gold that I'm wanting
so much as just - finding the gold.
It's the great big broad land way up yonder.
It's the forest where silence has lease.
It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder.
It's the stillness that fills me with peace.
Submitted by Leon Hart
Lyrics
Session File