In the back of a book, among a collection of other books, in a small hotel at the foot of a mine, on the outskirts of the most northerly town in the world, I found a poem called The Spell of the Yukon, written in 1907 by Robert Service. I thought it was one of the most beautifully written poems I had ever read so I adapted it into a folk song (you can hear it below this post)
The Spell of the Yukon (Lyrics adapted from the poem by Robert Service)
There’s a land where mountains are nameless,
And rivers run God knows where;
There are lives erring and aimless,
And deaths hangs by a hair;
Hardships you cannot reckon;
Valleys unpeopled and still;
There’s a land and oh, it beckons,
And I want to go back.
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.
You come to get rich, damned good reason;
Feel like an exile at first;
You hate it like hell for a season,
Then you’re worse than the worst.
It grips you like some kinds of sinning;
From foe to friend;
Seems since the beginning;
It will be. To the end.
In winter, brightness blinds you,
Whiteness tight as a drum,
Fear follows and finds you,
And silence renders you dumb.
I wanted gold, and I sought it;
I scrabbled and I gave.
Was it famine, I fought it;
Towards a grave.