T HIS is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain: Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane; Strong for the red rage of battle; sane, for I harry them sore; Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core; Swift as the panther in triumph, fierce as the bear in defeat, 5 Sired of bulldog parent, steeled in the furnace heat. Send me the best of your breeding, lend me your chosen ones; Them will I take to my bosom, them will I call my sons; Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat; But the othersthe misfits, the failuresI trample under my feet; 10 Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain, Ye would send me the spawn of your guttersGo! take back your spawn again. Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway; From my ruthless throne I have ruled alone for a million years and a day; Hugging my mighty treasure, waiting for man to come: 15 Till he swept like a turbid torrent, and after him sweptthe scum, The pallid pimp of the dead line, the enervate of the pen, One by one I weeded them out, for all that I sought wasMen. One by one I dismayed them, frightened them sore with my glooms; One by one I betrayed them unto my manifold dooms; 20 Drowned them like rats in my rivers, starved them like curs on my plains, Rotted the flesh that was left them, poisoned the blood in their veins; Burst with my winter upon them, searing for ever their sight, Lashed them with fungus-white faces, whimpering wild in the night; Staggering wild in the storm-whirl, stumbling mad through the snow, 25 Frozen stiff in the ice-pack, brittle and bent like a bow; Featureless, formless, forsaken, scented by wolves in their flight, Left for the wind to make music through ribs that are glittering white; Gnawing the black crust of failure, searching the pit of despair, Crooking the toe in the trigger, trying to patter a prayer; 30 Going outside with an escort, raving with lips all afoam; Writing a cheque for a million, drivelling feebly of home; Lost like a louse in the burning or else in the tented town Seeking a drunkards solace, sinking and sinking down; Steeped in the slime at the bottom, dead to a decent world, 35 Lost mid the human flotsam, far on the frontier hurled; In the camp at the bend of the river, with its dozen saloons aglare, Its gambling dens a-riot, its gramophones all ablare; Crimped with the crimes of a city, sin-ridden and bridled with lies In the hush of my mountained vastness, so natheless I suffer them thrive, 40 Crushing my Weak in their clutches, that only my Strong may survive. But the others, the men of my mettle, the men who would stablish my fame, Unto its ultimate issue, winning me honour, not shame; Searching my uttermost valleys, fighting each step as they go, Shooting the wrath of my rapids, scaling my ramparts of snow; 45 Ripping the guts of my mountains, looting the beds of my creeks, Them will I take to my bosom, and speak as a mother speaks. I am the land that listens, I am the land that broods; Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods. Long have I waited lonely, shunned as a thing accurst, 50 Monstrous, moody, pathetic, the last of the lands and the first; Visioning camp-fires at twilight, sad with a longing forlorn, Feeling my womb oer-pregnant with the seethe of cities unborn. Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway, And I wait for the men who will win meand I will not be won in a day; 55 And I will not be won by weaklings, subtle, suave, and mild, But by men with the hearts of vikings, and the simple faith of a child; Desperate, strong and resistless, unthrottled by fear or defeat, Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat. Lofty I stand from each sister land, patient and wearily wise, 60 With the weight of a world of sadness in my quiet, passionless eyes; Dreaming alone of a people, dreaming alone of a day, When men shall not rape my riches, and curse me and go away; Making a bawd of my bounty, fouling the hand that gave Till I rise in my wrath and I sweep on their path and I stamp them into a grave. 65 Dreaming of men who will bless me, of women esteeming me good, Of children born in my borders, of radiant motherhood, Of cities leaping to stature, of fame like a flag unfurled, As I pour the tide of my riches in the eager lap of the world. This is the Law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive; 70 That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive. Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain, This is the Will of the YukonLo! how she makes it plain!