THE CALL OF THE WILD
Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there's nothing else
to gaze on,
Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,
Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the binding sunsets
blazon,
Black Canyons where the rapids rip and roar?
Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream
streaking through it,
Search the Vastness for a something you have lost?
Have you strung your soul to silence? Then for God's sake go
and do it;
Hear the Challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.
Have you wandered in the wilderness, the sage-brush
desolation,
The bunch-grass levels where the cattle graze?
Have you whistled bits of rag-time at the end of creation,
And learned to know the desert's little ways?
Have you camped upon the foothills, have you galloped o'er
the ranges,
Have you roamed the arid sun-lands through an through?
Have you chummed up with the messa? Do you know its moods
and changes?
Then listen to the Wild - it's calling you.
Have you known the Great White Silence, not a snow-gemmed twig
aquiver?
(Eternal truths that shame our soothing lies.)
Have you broken trail on snowshoes? mushed your huskies up
the river,
Dared the unknown, led the way, and clutched the prize?
Have you marked the map's void spaces, mingled with the
mongrel races,
Felt the savage strength of brute in every thew?
And though grim as hell the worst is, can you round it off
with curses?
Then hearken to the Wild - it's wanting you.
Have you suffered, starved and triumphed, groveled down, yet
grasped at glory,
Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole?
"Done things" just for the doing, letting babblers
tell the story,
Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul?
Have you seen God in His splendors, heard the text that
nature renders?
(You'll never hear it in the family pew.)
The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do
things -
Then listen to the Wild - it's calling you.
They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with
their preaching,
They have soaked you in convention through and through;
They have put you in a showcase; you're a credit to their
teaching -
But can't you hear the Wild? - it's calling you.
Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide
us;
Let us journey to a lonely land I know.
There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam
to guide us,
And the Wild is calling, calling ... Let us go.
And the Wild is calling, calling ... Let us go.
Robert Service
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