The Prospector

Where the ragged, snow-capped saw tooth

  Cuts the azure of the sky

And watches o'er the lonely land

  As ages wander by;

Where the sentinel pines in grandeur

  Murmur to the glacier stream

As it, ice-gorged, gluts the canyon,

  Never brightened by the gleam

Of sun at brightest noon day,

  Nor moon of Arctic night,

And whose only link with Heaven

  Is the fitful Northern Light.

Where the Whistler shrills in triumph

  And the Big Horn dreams in peace,

Where the Brown Bear skulks to cover

  Up where silence holds the lease;

Where the land is as God left it

  Nor has known the tread of man,

There's a treasure ledge a-waiting--

  Go and find it if you can.

If your heart be steeled to triumph

  Nor beats less at your defeat;

Can you watch your whole world melt away

  And still smiling, fortune greet?

Will your heart and brain and sinew

  Crowd you on, when hunger's pain

Gnaws your belly and you're beaten,

  Can you lose, and fight again?

Can you raise the cup of fortune

  To your lips and bravely quaff

The draught she has prepared for you

  And win or lose and laugh?

Can you see the fruits of hardships

  Centered on one desperate throw

And know Fate's dice are loaded

  Nor curse to see them go?

Then take your burden up again

  And stagger up the trail,

You're bound to make a winning

  Cause you don't know how to fail.

I, who've spent my youth in following

  The lure of hidden gold

Must pass the buck to Nature

  And admit I'm growing old.

And yet each spring I hear it calling

  And it's music to my ears,

The call of lonely places

  That I've listened to for years.

It's cost me all most men hold dear

  Some forty years of life,

And all the joys that others get

  In babies, home, and wife.

My life's been all to-morrows

  And my family only dreams

And to the average plodder

  I've missed it all it seems.

Still, I've never taken orders

  And I've always liked the game,

And if life could be lived over,

  Why,--I'd live it just the same.