To the Man of the High North

My rhymes are rough, and often in my rhyming I've drifted, silver- sailed, on seas of dream, Hearing afar the bells of Elfland chiming, Seeing the groves of Arcadie agleam.

I was the thrall of Beauty that rejoices From peak snow-diademed to regal star; Yet to mine aerie ever pierced the voices, The pregnant voices of the Things That Are.

The Here, the Now, the vast Forlorn around us; The gold-delirium, the ferine strife; The lusts that lure us on, the hates that hound us; Our red rags in the patch-work quilt of Life.

The nameless men who nameless rivers travel, And in strange valleys greet strange deaths alone; The grim, intrepid ones who would unravel The mysteries that shroud the Polar Zone.

These will I sing, and if one of you linger Over my pages in the Long, Long Night, And on some lone line lay a calloused finger, Saying: "It's human-true--it hits me right"; Then will I count this loving toil well spent; Then will I dream awhile--content, content.

Men of the High North

Men of the High North, the wild sky is blazing; Islands of opal float on silver seas; Swift splendors kindle, barbaric, amazing; Pale ports of amber, golden argosies. Ringed all around us the proud peaks are glowing; Fierce chiefs in council, their wigwam the sky; Far, far below us the big Yukon flowing, Like threaded quicksilver, gleams to the eye.

Men of the High North, you who have known it; You in whose hearts its splendors have abode; Can you renounce it, can you disown it? Can you forget it, its glory and its goad? Where is the hardship, where is the pain of it? Lost in the limbo of things you've forgot; Only remain the guerdon and gain of it; Zest of the foray, and God, how you fought!

You who have made good, you foreign faring; You money magic to far lands has whirled; Can you forget those days of vast daring, There with

your soul on the Top o' the World? Nights when no peril could keep you awake on Spruce boughs you spread for your couch in the snow; Taste all your feasts like the beans and the bacon Fried at the camp-fire at forty below?

Can you remember your huskies all going, Barking with joy and their brushes in air; You in your parka, glad-eyed and glowing, Monarch, your subjects the wolf and the bear? Monarch, your kingdom unravisht and gleaming; Mountains your throne, and a river your car; Crash of a bull moose to rouse you from dreaming; Forest your couch, and your candle a star.

You who this faint day the High North is luring Unto her vastness, taintlessly sweet; You who are steel-braced, straight-lipped, enduring, Dreadless in danger and dire in defeat: Honor the High North ever and ever, Whether she crown you, or whether she slay; Suffer her fury, cherish and love her-- He who would rule he must learn to obey.

Men of the High North, fierce mountains love you; Proud rivers leap when you ride on their breast. See, the austere sky, pensive above you, Dons all her jewels to smile on your rest. Children of Freedom, scornful of frontiers, We who are weaklings honor your worth. Lords of the wilderness, Princes of Pioneers, Let's have a rouse that will ring round the earth.