Why is it that no man stays away
When he's sworn to his friends he would?
Where lies the grip this country hath
All tangled around the heart
That takes a grip that can never slip
And can never be torn apart?

Is it the lure of the summer sunshine
That goes to the head like wine?
Is it the lure of the far flung meadows
Of the shadowy scented pine?
Is it the lure of going where none have gone
Of just being alone in the wild?
Is it the lure of the ancient glaciers
That were old when Christ was a child?

They come here wild, athirst for gold
They would win and run away,
They lose the stake they brought along
And then they have to stay.
Here each one follows his own bent,
The mines, the hills, the mart,
Work's but a name, the end's the same,
The country steals your heart.

There's a lure to the land of the poppy,
There's a lure to the land of your birth,
You swear you abhor it, and yet you'll long for it
As no other land on this earth.
There's the lure of the snow mantled vastness,
There's the lure of each valley and hill,
Of friends that you've met, that you'll never forget
And you'll want to come back, and you will.

AND STILL I LIKE ALASKA

I've tramped across her endless miles of tundra,
I've rafted all her rapid flowing streams,
She's kept me on the hummer,
I've fought mosquits in summer
And "siwashed" neath Aurora's wintry beams,
And still, I like Alaska.

I went a winter once on pay streak bacon,
I've gone a year on nothing much but beans,
I've squandered all my time checks,
The kind they give us roughnecks,
And haven't got a dollar in my jeans,
And still, I like Alaska.

I got a stake one time and wandered Outside,
And I'm telling you I surely put on "dog,"
But they got in between me and my poke
They sure did clean me
And I hit for Dixon's Entrance, on the "hog,"
And still, I like Alaska.

I don't suppose a man will live to beat it,
Some day we'll quit this land of ice and snow,
And when the Devil gits us,
And finds a place that fits us,
And we're working on the sulphur beds below,
I know I'll like Alaska.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RHYMES OF A ROUGHNECK***

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