The Lament of the Old Sour Dough
I've trudged, and I've starved, and I've frozen,
All over this white, barren land—
Where the sea stretches straight, white, and silent,
Where the timberless white mountains stand—
From the white peaks that gleam in the moonlight.
Like a garment that graces a soul.
To the last white sweep of the prairies.
Where the black shadows brood round the Pole.
(Now, pray don't presume from this prelude
That a flame of poetical fire
Is to burst from my brain like a beacon,
For I've only been tuning my lyre
To the low, sad voice of a singer
Who's inspired to sing you some facts
About the improvements in staking
And the men who mine with an ax.)
I've panned from Peru to Point Barrow,
But I never located a claim
Till I'd fully persuaded my conscience
That pay dirt pervaded the same;
And this is the source of my sorrow.
As you will be forced to agree.
When you learn how relentless Misfortune
Has dumped all her tailings on me.
I worked with my pardner all summer,
Crosscutting a cussed cold creek,
Which we never once thought of locating
Unless we located the streak;
And when, at the close of the season,
We discovered the creek was a fake,
We also discovered the region
Had nothing left in it to stake.
We traversed the toe-twisting tundra.
Where reindeer root round for their feed,
And the hungry Laplanders who herd them
Devour them before they can breed.
Here it seemed that good claims might be plenty,
And we thought we would stake one—perhaps;
But we found to our grief that the gulches
Were staked in the name of the Lapps.
A hundred long leagues to the northward.
O'er the untrodden, sun-burnished snow,
We struggled, half-blind and half famished.
To the sea where the staunch whalers go.
