The Spell Of The Yukon Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABABACAC ADADAEAE EFEFGHGH DIDIGJGJ KDKDLDLD MNMNOPOP LQLQLDLD RSRTUVUV GUGUKLKLI wanted the gold and I sought it | A |
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave | B |
Was it famine or scurvy I fought it | A |
I hurled my youth into a grave | B |
I wanted the gold and I got it | A |
Came out with a fortune last fall | C |
Yet somehow life's not what I thought it | A |
And somehow the gold isn't all | C |
- | |
No There's the land Have you seen it | A |
It's the cussedest land that I know | D |
From the big dizzy mountains that screen it | A |
To the deep deathlike valleys below | D |
Some say God was tired when He made it | A |
Some say it's a fine land to shun | E |
Maybe but there's some as would trade it | A |
For no land on earth and I'm one | E |
- | |
You come to get rich damned good reason | E |
You feel like an exile at first | F |
You hate it like hell for a season | E |
And then you are worse than the worst | F |
It grips you like some kinds of sinning | G |
It twists you from foe to a friend | H |
It seems it's been since the beginning | G |
It seems it will be to the end | H |
- | |
I've stood in some mighty mouthed hollow | D |
That's plumb full of hush to the brim | I |
I've watched the big husky sun wallow | D |
In crimson and gold and grow dim | I |
Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming | G |
And the stars tumbled out neck and crop | J |
And I've thought that I surely was dreaming | G |
With the peace o' the world piled on top | J |
- | |
The summer no sweeter was ever | K |
The sunshiny woods all athrill | D |
The grayling aleap in the river | K |
The bighorn asleep on the hill | D |
The strong life that never knows harness | L |
The wilds where the caribou call | D |
The freshness the freedom the farness | L |
O God how I'm stuck on it all | D |
- | |
The winter the brightness that blinds you | M |
The white land locked tight as a drum | N |
The cold fear that follows and finds you | M |
The silence that bludgeons you dumb | N |
The snows that are older than history | O |
The woods where the weird shadows slant | P |
The stillness the moonlight the mystery | O |
I've bade 'em good by but I can't | P |
- | |
There's a land where the mountains are nameless | L |
And the rivers all run God knows where | Q |
There are lives that are erring and aimless | L |
And deaths that just hang by a hair | Q |
There are hardships that nobody reckons | L |
There are valleys unpeopled and still | D |
There's a land oh it beckons and beckons | L |
And I want to go back and I will | D |
- | |
They're making my money diminish | R |
I'm sick of the taste of champagne | S |
Thank God when I'm skinned to a finish | R |
I'll pike to the Yukon again | T |
I'll fight and you bet it's no sham fight | U |
It's hell but I've been there before | V |
And it's better than this by a damnsite | U |
So me for the Yukon once more | V |
- | |
There's gold and it's haunting and haunting | G |
It's luring me on as of old | U |
Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting | G |
So much as just finding the gold | U |
It's the great big broad land 'way up yonder | K |
It's the forests where silence has lease | L |
It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder | K |
It's the stillness that fills me with peace | L |
Robert William Service
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