A man that's spent years knocking round "out in front"Has most usually had lots of pals—He's mixed up with pardners at various timesAnd he's had his affairs with the gals.Now, a pardner's peculiar in lots of his waysAnd he'll ditch you for various reasons,And a gal never knows straight up from twiceAnd her mind seems to change with the seasons.
I've been in on good ground with pardners I've stakedAnd I thought they were square, till I foundThey were trying to cross me, the miserable pups,And whipsaw me out of my ground.I've had a few pards that would stand the hard grindAnd they'd stick through hard luck night and day;They were all you could ask while you rustled for grub,But they blew up when you uncovered the "pay."
Way back in the "eighties" when I'm just a kid,I crossed up with a breed gal I'd metOne winter at Circle; she cleaned me that yearAnd skipped out with all she could get.I've fallen for females in half of the campsThat's spread over this country up here,But "square guys" or "pretzels" I couldn't get byAnd none of them stuck for a year.
I got kind of discouraged and quit the she sexAnd figgered I'd just herd with males,But it don't make no difference, I guess that I'm wrong,'Cause there's always the parting of trails.I've had lots of dogs, but a dog always dies,Or else the poor devil gets killed.When you like 'em and lose 'em, their loss leaves a holeThat seems for a time can't be filled.
So pardners and females and dogs is tabooAnd I know, 'cause I've fussed with 'em all.There's only one pal that I know is true blueAnd it's that Thirty U.S. on the wall.She's stood by my shoulder and stopped a brown bearAnd she keeps the cache full in the Fall;She's got the one talk that a claim jumper knowsAnd she craves no attention at all.
I'm getting old now, and some sot in my ways,And I don't loosen up like I did.I'm slower to make friends and slower to trustThan I used to be when I'm a kid.So it's good-by to females and good-by to dogs,And good-by to pardners and all,For the only one pal that I find I can trustIs that Thirty U.S. on the wall.
The China Coast's a dumping groundAnd the South Sea gets its shareOf the kind of men that don't make goodThe kind of man that never couldThe men that never care.
A worthless, careless drinking lotCombed out from between the Poles.It's gin, and cards, a woman's breath,Laughter and love and sudden deathAnd the Devil gets their souls.
It's a throwback to a weaker strainThat's washed by the Tropic tide.And a mixture of Dago and JapaneseLatin and Jew and PortugeseCrops out thru a sun-tanned hide.
But the Northland gets a sterner breedTo fuse in its harder mould.It's the breed of men that don't know fail;That's the breed of men that hit the trailFor the fabled land of gold.
They're a sturdy, fearless, fighting lotAnd they play the game to win.They fall for women, wine, the gameAnd win or lose, they smile the sameAnd to quit is their only sin.
Here the Norsman bunks with the canny ScotAnd the lad from the Emerald IsleWorks side by side with Russ and Dane,North-bred men of brawn and brain,Men that are worth your while.
So me for the land of the Midnight SunWith the north lights in the sky,Me for the land that mothers this raceWhere you have to fight to hold your place,Where you can't quit till you die.
The dream of the white man ever goes outTo the fight that can never be won,And ever he plans to do the thingsThat they say can never be done.It's seldom he values the things that areWhat he craves he may never gain,Yet ever he tries, till the day he diesAnd then feels he has lived in vain.
He climbs to the top of the highest hillsTo search out the vales afar;He bedrocks a hole on the deepest creeksHe hitches his cart to a star.He's ever the first in the far stampedeAs he chases the rainbow's blend,But it's not the need, and it's not the greed,It's the wanting to win in the end.
And whether he strives in the lofty rangeOr tries in the crowded mart,The longing to do what has never been doneIs uppermost in his heart.He tries to build where none other has built,Win the maid that none other has won,To find the gold that he never can hold,To finish what cannot be done.
He lives his life in a trying wayAnd he scorns the things that are tame,If all seems lost, he still fights on,For ever he plays the game.And the efforts he makes as he strives to winAre a credit to him and his breed,And the gods will count and give full amountAnd accept the act for the deed.
FOR
The dream of the white man ever goes outTo the fight that can never be won,And ever he plans to do the thingsThat they say can never be done.
It's seldom he values the things that are,What he craves he never may gain,But ever he tries, till the day he diesAnd then feels he has lived in vain.
As one who lays aside a task, where one has ruled alone,I lay aside the crown of hell, and give to you my throne;As one who feels his race is run, whose day is of the past,I recognize your genius, and abdicate at last.I go and leave you master, and I feel it's just as well,For Hades lacks its master, until you rule in hell.The world wags on and changes, old methods now seem weak,And the changes of a thousand years, of these I fain would speak.
I've raised and sponsored many names, that darken history's page,I've made them rulers of the world in many a by-gone age.They all have shown a human turn, from Nero down to you,But now my life-long dream of a super fiend at last seems coming true.I've watched you since the faintest spark blazed in your mother's womb,I've watched your hypocritic grief, beside your father's tomb;I know the tainted blood that flows thru your each and every veinThat shows up in your withered arm, and feeds your fevered brain.
I saw it in your grandsire, where first it cropped out plainWhen German gold was squandered to slay the honest Dane.I fed you dreams of empire, and dreams of lust and greedAnd the age old lust of conquest that taints all of your breed.The strain that showed in Nero, cropped out alike in you,You killed your gentle mother, but not as Nero slew.I gave you hate of Albion, for all the world will tellThat could I kill that Anglo strain, I'd use the earth for hell.
I loathe the Anglo-Saxon race, I hate their English speech,For where the Union Jack waves high, the Cross will ever reach.Their ignorant millions till the soil, for they protect their own,I hate it for I've never had this ensign for mine own.I taught you how to use God's church, I built the path you trod,I filled your mouth until you claimed, a pardnership with God.I told you tales to tell to men, I coached you every hourUntil an egomaniac ran wild, mad with a lust for power.
I made an army for you then, the peer of all war lords,I smiled the night you went away to visit Norway fiords.I knew your Bagdad railway schemes, I knew the Austrian claims,I knew that German gold would guide the mad assassin's aims.I knew the schemes that you had planned, the one that nothing curbs,I envied your diplomacy that blamed it on the Serbs.My brain ne'er hatched a finer scheme, your armies marking timeAnd then the rape of Belgium, your premier man-sized crime.
And if one deals in hellish schemes, that one must stamp your worth,You made a shambles of that land, you moved hell up on earth.The cries of mangled maidens, the mutilated child,The tears of butchered mothers, would drive an earth man wild,And thru it all proclaiming, you were the tool of God—O pardner in this orgy, no one suspected fraud.You butchered, maimed and pillaged, hell never saw such sightsAs the Prussian Guard remembers, on those first Belgian nights.
O shades of maddened Nero and his early Christian fires,Could he have been in Belgium and have seen your funeral pyres!Could he have seen your orgies he would have wept for shameBut had he your fiendish cunning, he might have done the same.But the hated Saxon balked you and the desperate fighting FrankHurled back our super devils and took us on the flank.Your inbred tainted offspring lost his chances at VerdunWhere curtained steel just saved the world from the grip of brutal Hun.
But Wilhelm, you are crafty, you are mine own I weenYour fertile brain had brought to life the hell-born submarine,You killed the unarmed merchantmen, you murdered in the dark,You sent the child and mother to feed your friend the shark.The world grew sick with wonder, no voice was raised to laudAnd still you did it in your name, the name of you and God.Where you have trod the world is dead, no sign of life or mirth,You beat me, Bill, you beat my hell, with this of yours on earth.
You won hell's admiration and of all of mine own folkWhen you paired off with the ghastly Turk, that was a master stroke.And all the things you did before, just now seem weak and tameSince you launched that Dardanelles campaign of pillage, lust and shame.To fuss thus with my chosen race, my ally since time datesProclaimed that Kultur and the Turk are well matched running mates.And tho I've watched hell's orgies, and stood by in fiendish glee,I quit you, Bill, these Turkish stunts are far too much for me.
When officers from Kultur's class stand by and watch a TurkJust disembowel a mother, why, Bill, it makes me shirk.It makes me shudder and I've watched the master fiends of hell,But none of them have brains like you, none do their work so well.When Turk and German flood with oil, then set a school ablazeAnd bayonet the babies, as they stumble thru the haze,I yield the crown to you, Dear Bill, my pupil passes meYou take the rôle of Master and your pupil I will be.
I've worked for hell's best interests, my master now appearsFor when your name is mentioned, the imps break into cheers.The gavel of the poor damned souls, that long has rung their knell,Is passed to you, I abdicate and now you rule in hell.For years I've done the best I could, now I realize I'm thru,And in the future I'm content to live and learn from you.Your earthly work is finished, soon in hell you'll carve your nameAnd I shudder when I realize that hell won't be the same.
Looking for placer pangar,Loafing about in the hills,Getting your grub with a rifle,Taking your drink from rills.Getting your bed from the spruce tree,Taking your course by your dreams,Just camping alone in the mountains,Siwashing along the streams.
Locating the hind sight on Nature,Traveling alone and far,Thinking with no one to guide you,Digesting the things that are.Back trailing the life that's past you,Peeping at what's in store,Pondering over life's mistakes,Wondering, how many more.
Dreaming alone of childhood days,Regretting some things that are past,Recalling lost opportunities,And chances too good to last.Living your whole life over,Recalling the daily grind,Thanking your God that it's over,Glad that you've left it behind.
But still regretting your errors,Sad for some things you have done,Wishing that you had coppered some playsAs you count them one by one.Now living a life, clean, decent,For man never sins alone,Getting a grip on your ego,Coming at last to your own.
You dream and you hunt all summerTill you notice a chill in the air,Then you think of your warm snug cabinAnd you feel that you'd rather be there.Then you head over unblazed passesTill at last you herd with your own,And though you located no pangarYou are better for being alone.
My trade was old when the world was new,Ere the pyramids rose by the NileMen quitted their wives, and gave me their goodsFor the warmth of my kiss, and my smile.For never was wife who could hold her manBy the honeymoon's afterglowDid I veil mine eyes and beckon to him,God's truth, and 'tis you who know.
My trade was old when the world was new,Long ere Caesar ruled in Rome,To spend their gold in a harlot's cellPatricians quitted home.And high born dames since the world beganHave learned to sit and to sighAnd to patiently wait for their lords to leaveThe woman that you pass by.
I'm only a pawn in the game called life,Yet I take what you never could hold;I garner the kisses you'd barter life forAnd with them, I gather your gold.I garner the best of your manhood's primeThen quit them when shattered in health;I bring to heel the ones that you loveAnd smiling I shear them of wealth.
To garner the wealth that you hold in storeI must keep me surpassing fair,For the life that I lead is an open bookAnd the game that I deal is square.Stop—think of the maids and wives you knowAs you drift thru life's subtle game—How many are dealing as straight as I?How many can say the same?
You give your all, and you slave your lifeIn a struggle to hold one man;You think you're paid if he call you wifeAnd be true to you for a span.You keep his house and you bear his childAnd you walk with your head held highBut most of his love, and his kisses goTo the woman that you pass by.
The favors you give, I sell for gold,And men prize what costs them high;You never will learn that love goes outWith the tear in a woman's eye;That the patient drudge who sits at homeAnd learns to save and to mendCan never hold the light of loveBut is doomed to lose in the end.
So I follow the old dishonored trade,Bedecked in garments fine,And the cream of the earth is saved for meIn raiment and food and wine.And life to me is a merry gameTho, sometimes, I weep and sigh,For deep down in your heart, do you envy meThe woman that you pass by?
Why is it Alaskans all come backWhen they've quit this land for good?Why is it that no man stays awayWhen he's sworn to his friends he would?Where lies the grip this country hathAll tangled around the heartThat takes a grip that can never slipAnd can never be torn apart?
Is it the lure of the summer sunshineThat goes to the head like wine?Is it the lure of the far flung meadowsOf the shadowy scented pine?Is it the lure of going where none have goneOf just being alone in the wild?Is it the lure of the ancient glaciersThat were old when Christ was a child?
They come here wild, athirst for goldThey would win and run away,They lose the stake they brought alongAnd then they have to stay.Here each one follows his own bent,The mines, the hills, the mart,Work's but a name, the end's the same,The country steals your heart.
There's a lure to the land of the poppy,There's a lure to the land of your birth,You swear you abhor it, and yet you'll long for itAs no other land on this earth.There's the lure of the snow mantled vastness,There's the lure of each valley and hill,Of friends that you've met, that you'll never forgetAnd you'll want to come back, and you will.
I've tramped across her endless miles of tundra,I've rafted all her rapid flowing streams,She's kept me on the hummer,I've fought mosquits in summerAnd "siwashed" neath Aurora's wintry beams,And still, I like Alaska.
I went a winter once on pay streak bacon,I've gone a year on nothing much but beans,I've squandered all my time checks,The kind they give us roughnecks,And haven't got a dollar in my jeans,And still, I like Alaska.
I got a stake one time and wandered Outside,And I'm telling you I surely put on "dog,"But they got in between me and my pokeThey sure did clean meAnd I hit for Dixon's Entrance, on the "hog,"And still, I like Alaska.
I don't suppose a man will live to beat it,Some day we'll quit this land of ice and snow,And when the Devil gits us,And finds a place that fits us,And we're working on the sulphur beds below,I know I'll like Alaska.