Robert Service: Bard of the Yukon

I was introduced to the poetry of Robert Service while a high school student in Montreal in the 1960s. My grade 11 literature teacher read us his poem, "Spell of the Yukon". The conscious words transformed internally into flow of feelings and imagination that profoundly affected me. I didn't understand the reasons for its impact, but I came to be drawn to the idea of visiting the Yukon one day.

It wasn't until the early 1990s that I finally fulfilled my dream of traveling to the Yukon. Over the course of the last 20 years I have hiked, toured, canoed, and rafted some of the best wilderness that the Yukon has to offer. This is the only true way to understand the words of Robert Service.

I won't bother to relate his biography, although it is most interesting. I figure you can research that for yourself, if you are of a mind to do so.

Before reading the "Spell of the Yukon", you should know that Robert Service wrote most of his work in Dawson City around the time of the Klondike Goldrush. If you enjoyed the poem, you may want to read more of his works. I have provided links to 2 of his most famous poems that he reads for his audience - Cremation of Sam McGee & Shooting of Dan McGrew. And, if the connection goes deeper, I imagine you will visit the Yukon one day.

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, 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 thought that I surely was dreaming,
With the peace o' the world piled on top. 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 freshness, the freedom, the farness —
O 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 'em good-by — 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, 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 damsite —
So me for the Yukon once more. There’s gold, and it’s 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 forests where silence has lease;
It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.