The Spell of the Yukon

There is snow on all the trees in my hamlet this evening.  The ground is insulated with over a foot of new, white powder.  Winter has finally arrived.  There is something about the cold that is at once frightening and peaceful. There are few things that invigorate the soul like walking at night with the chill, Arctic air in your face.  You move forward, face to the wind, keeping the pace.

This poem by Robert Service describes both the pursuit of gold that drew men into the cold to seek their fortunes, and the rugged Yukon.  Somehow the seeking and struggle ended up being more valuable to these sturdy men than the precious metal.  Stillness, chill, perspective, and peace.

The Law of the Yukon

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, deathlike 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 as would trade it
For no land on earth — and I’m one.

You come to get rich (damned good reason);
You feel like an exile at first;
You hate it like hell for a season,
And then you are 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’ve thought that I surely was dreaming,
With the peace o’ the world piled on top.

The summer — no sweeter was ever;
The sunshiny woods all athrill;
The grayling aleap in the river,
The bighorn asleep on the hill.
The strong life that never knows harness;
The wilds where the caribou call;
The freshness, the freedom, the farness –
O 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 mystery,
I’ve bade ‘em good-by — 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, 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 damsite –
So me for the Yukon once more.

There’s gold, and it’s 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, broad land ‘way up yonder,
It’s the forests where silence has lease;
It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.

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The Cost of Leadership

There’s a common maxim that goes something like this: “The world is run by tired men.”  This proverb obviously includes the fatiguing and never-ending work of women as well, especially mothers.

In business, it is well known that if you want something done, ask a busy man.  The reason being, the busy man has learned the value of time and efficient effort. He can therefore carve out time for additional tasks.

Leadership costs much.  In time.  In emotion.  In soul.  In will.  In body.  The effective leader is one who is constantly improving, staying sharp and crisp, honing his skills and influence.  This cost is beautifully embodied in this poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

The Ladder of St. Augustine

Saint Augustine! well hast thou said,

That of our vices we can frame

A ladder, if we will but tread

Beneath our feet each deed of shame!

 

All common things, each day’s events,

That with the hour begin and end,

Our pleasures and our discontents,

Are rounds by which we may ascend.

 

The low desire, the base design,

That makes another’s virtues less;

The revel of the ruddy wine,

And all occasions of excess;

 

The longing for ignoble things;

The strife for triumph more than truth;

The hardening of the heart, that brings

Irreverence for the dreams of youth;

 

All thoughts of ill; all evil deeds,

That have their root in thoughts of ill;

Whatever hinders or impedes

The action of the nobler will; —

 

All these must first be trampled down

Beneath our feet, if we would gain

In the bright fields of fair renown

The right of eminent domain.

 

We have not wings, we cannot soar;

But we have feet to scale and climb

By slow degrees, by more and more,

The cloudy summits of our time.

 

The mighty pyramids of stone

That wedge-like cleave the desert airs,

When nearer seen, and better known,

Are but gigantic flights of stairs.

 

The distant mountains, that uprear

Their solid bastions to the skies,

Are crossed by pathways, that appear

As we to higher levels rise.

 

The heights by great men reached and kept

Were not attained by sudden flight,

But they, while their companions slept,

Were toiling upward in the night.

 

Standing on what too long we bore

With shoulders bent and downcast eyes,

We may discern — unseen before —

A path to higher destinies,

 

Nor doom the irrevocable Past

As wholly wasted, wholly vain,

If, rising on its wrecks, at last

To something nobler we attain.

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Words and Their Power

J.R.R. Tolkien

“And God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light.”

In his excellent book, Stein On Writing, Sol Stein writes about his early training as a writer while a high school student in the Bronx during the 1940’s.  One effective teacher taught Stein and his classmates about the power of words by reading “our stories to us in a monotone as if he were reading from the pages of a phone directory.  What we learned with each stab of pain was that the words themselves and not the inflection supplied by the reader had to carry the emotion of the story.”

Words have intrinsic power.  One of the things J.R.R. Tolkien believed and incorporated into his work was the belief that words have power.  That words and their sound when spoken should and do embody what they signify.  Catholics have long believed that to speak the name of a saint, say Francis of Assisi, was to summon their presence.  Christians know the power of speaking the name of Jesus.  Think of the power of these words when spoken:

“I love you.”

“This is My body which is broken for you.”

“You’ll never amount to anything.”

“You’re going to live.”

“The best is yet to come.”

Here is a challenge to us as writers and speakers.  How can we be more fresh and stimulating with our choice of words?  Do we take the easy path of cliché rather than doing the hard work of a finding a rare and poetic expression?  And do we use this almost magical power of words to create life, success, happiness and hope rather than the blackness of despair and discouragement?  All embodied in what we say….

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“To An Athlete Dying Young”

“A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest.  I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into exhausting pace, and then at the end, punish himself even more.” (Steve Prefontaine)

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields were glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.

–A. E. Housman

In tribute to running great, Steve Prefontaine (1951-75), who died much too young.

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It “Couldn’t” Be Done?

It Couldn’t Be Done

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done,
But he with a chuckle replied
That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one
Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.

So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
On his face. If he worried he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it.

Somebody scoffed: “Oh, you’ll never do that;
At least no one ever has done it”;
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat,
And the first thing we knew he’d begun it.

With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
Without any doubting or quiddit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it.

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failure;
There are thousands to point out to you, one by one,
The dangers that wait to assail you.

But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,
Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start to sing as you tackle the thing
That “cannot be done,” and you’ll do it.

–Edgar A. Guest

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Resurrection

Rejoice, heavenly powers! Sing choirs of angels!
Exult, all creation around God’s throne!
Jesus Christ, our King is risen!
Sound the trumpet of salvation!

Rejoice, O earth, in shining splendor,
radiant in the brightness of your King!
Christ has conquered! Glory fills you!
Darkness vanishes for ever!

Rejoice, O Mother Church! Exult in glory!
The risen Savior shines upon you!
Let this place resound with joy,
echoing the mighty song of all God’s people!

My dearest friends,
standing with me in this holy light,
join me in asking God for mercy,
that he may give his unworthy minister
grace to sing his Easter praises.

The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them up to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give him thanks and praise.
It is truly right that with full hearts and minds and voices
we should praise the unseen God, the all-powerful Father,
and his only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
For Christ has ransomed us with his blood,
and paid for us the price of Adam’s sin to our eternal Father!

This is our passover feast,
When Christ, the true Lamb, is slain,
whose blood consecrates the homes of all believers.

This is the night,
when first you saved our fathers:
you freed the people of Israel from their slav’ry,
and led them dry-shod through the sea.

This is the night,
when the pillar of fire destroyed the darkness of sin.

This is night,
when Christians ev’rywhere,
washed clean of sin and freed from all defilement,
are restored to grace and grow together in holiness.

This is the night,
when Jesus broke the chains of death
and rose triumphant from the grave.

What good would life have been to us,
had Christ not come as our Redeemer?

Father, how wonderful your care for us!
How boundless your merciful love!
To ransom a slave you gave away your Son.

O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam,
which gained for us so great a Redeemer!

Most blessed of all nights,
chosen by God to see Christ rising from the dead!

Of this night scripture says:
“The night will be as clear as day:
it will become my light, my joy.”

The power of this holy night dispels all evil,
washes guilt away, restores lost innocence,
brings mourners joy;
it casts out hatred, brings us peace,
and humbles earthly pride.

Night truly blessed,
when heaven is wedded to earth
and we are reconciled to God!

Therefore, heavenly Father, in the joy of this night,
receive our evening sacrifice of praise,
your Church’s solemn offering.

Accept this Easter candle,
a flame divided but undimmed,
a pillar of fire that glows to the honor of God.

Let it mingle with the lights of heaven
and continue bravely burning
to dispel the darkness of this night!

May the Morning Star which never sets
find this flame still burning:
Christ, that Morning Star,
who came back from the dead,
and shed his peaceful light on all mankind,
your Son, who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

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“An Instrument Of Thy Peace”

“Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
― St. Francis of Assisi

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The Heart Of The Sourdough

Like most fellow bloggers in the blogosphere, I like to monitor the traffic.  The longer I write, the more people stop by to read.  Oddly enough, I consistently get lots of hits from people who like poetry about the Yukon.

I’ve enjoyed the poetry of Robert Service ever since the late Jim Elliot, missionary and martyr to Equador’s Auca Indians, first introduced me to it in the late 1980′s via his biography, Shadow Of The Almighty: The Life And Testament Of Jim Elliot. Service’s poetry, like Jim Elliot himself, is rugged and adventurous, revealing the wildness and magnitude of God.

Anyway, here’s another Robert Service opus.  Enjoy!

______________________________

There where the mighty mountains bare their fangs unto the moon,

There where the sullen sun-dogs glare in the snow-bright, bitter noon,

And the glacier-glutted streams sweep down at the clarion call of June.

There where the livid tundras keep their tryst with the tranquil snows;

There where the silences are spawned, and the light of hell-fire flows

Into the bowl of the midnight sky, violet, amber and rose.

There where the rapids churn and roar, and the ice-floes bellowing run;

Where the tortured, twisted rivers of blood rush to the setting sun –

I’ve packed my kit and I’m going, boys, ere another day is done.

* * * * *

I knew it would call, or soon or late, as it calls the whirring wings;

It’s the olden lure, it’s the golden lure, it’s the lure of the timeless things,

And to-night, oh, God of the trails untrod, how it whines in my heart-strings!

I’m sick to death of your well-groomed gods, your make believe and your show;

I long for a whiff of bacon and beans, a snug shakedown in the snow;

A trail to break, and a life at stake, and another bout with the foe.

With the raw-ribbed Wild that abhors all life, the Wild that would crush and rend,

I have clinched and closed with the naked North, I have learned to defy and defend;

Shoulder to shoulder we have fought it out — yet the Wild must win in the end.

I have flouted the Wild. I have followed its lure, fearless, familiar, alone;

By all that the battle means and makes I claim that land for mine own;

Yet the Wild must win, and a day will come when I shall be overthrown.

Then when as wolf-dogs fight we’ve fought, the lean wolf-land and I;

Fought and bled till the snows are red under the reeling sky;

Even as lean wolf-dog goes down will I go down and die.

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As The Ruin Falls

I first encountered this C.S. Lewis poem on the record pictured here.  It was 1981.  I bought this album, entitled Love Broke Thru by Phil Keaggy. It remains one of my most valuable recordings.

If you know much about Phil and his wife, Bernadette, you know that the work of C.S. Lewis looms large in their pilgrimage.  It has given them light through very trying times, especially the time in which the music for this recording was created.

The third song on Side One is this work of poetry by Lewis sung by Phil to guitars and flute.

The poem is an eloquent unveiling, as it were, of the empty life of the self-absorbed and the way out of the shell.  Phil beautifully set this to music.  It is a moving poem and song.  Enjoy.

As The Ruin Falls

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love –a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek–
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

–C.S. Lewis

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Fire and Rain

Back in the late 1960′s a talented singer-songwriter from the East Coast was struggling to find his place in the world as well as the entertainment business.  He had a band named The Flying Machine.  He moved to New York City.

Like so many young and successful musicians, he was surrounded by the trappings of “the life.”  Frenetic existence, pushing and clawing to make make a name and a statement with his art, and drugs.  The latter, coupled with depression, snared him in a bad way.  He said, “I learned a lot about music and too much about drugs.”

He sought help at a drug rehabilitation center in Massachusetts for his heroin dependance and depression.  While there he befriended a girl named Suzanne.  The friendship was, alas, short-lived as Suzanne committed suicide.  This marked him deeply and he wrote a moving chronicle of the period, “Fire and Rain.”

James Taylor eventually got free of drugs and his art is better than ever.  Sometimes it helps to know the background of a song, the circumstances that give it birth.  Context is all.  It is a remarkably frank plea of someone looking for help when life and dreams have been shattered.  Here it is:

                            Fire and Rain

Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone
Susanne the plans they made put an end to you
I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song
I just can’t remember who to send it to

I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you again

Won’t you look down upon me, Jesus
You’ve got to help me make a stand
You’ve just got to see me through another day
My body’s aching and my time is at hand
And I won’t make it any other way

Oh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you again

Been walking my mind to an easy time my back turned towards the sun
Lord knows when the cold wind blows it’ll turn your head around
Well, there’s hours of time on the telephone line to talk about things to come
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground

Oh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you, baby, one more time again, now

Thought I’d see you one more time again
There’s just a few things coming my way this time around, now
Thought I’d see you, thought I’d see you fire and rain, now.

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