Hank Snow - Spell Of The Yukon Lyrics

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 death-like 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 that would trade it for no land owner and I'm one



You come to get rich that's a good reason you feel like an exile at first

You hate it like hell for a season and then you're 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 thought that I surely was dreaming with the peace of the world piled on top



The summer no sweeter was ever the sunshiny woods all a thrill

The grayling a leap in the river the bighorn asleep on a hill

The strong life that never knows harness the wilds where the caribou call

The freshness the freedom the farness oh 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 myst'ry I'd bade them goodbye 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 how 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 damn sight so me for the Yukon once more



There's gold and its 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 broadland way up yonder it's the forest where silence has lease

It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder it's the stillness that fills me with peace