Analysis of The Law Of The Yukon
This 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,
Sired of a 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.
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,
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, frighting them sore with my glooms;
One by one I betrayed them unto my manifold dooms.
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 forever their sight,
Lashed them with fungus-white faces, whimpering wild in the night;
"Staggering blind through the storm-whirl, stumbling mad through the snow,
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;
Going outside with an escort, raving with lips all afoam,
Writing a cheque for a million, driveling 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,
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 ariot, its gramophones all ablare;
Crimped with the crimes of a city, sin-ridden and bridled with lies,
In the hush of my mountained vastness, in the flush of my midnight skies.
Plague-spots, yet tools of my purpose, so natheless I suffer them thrive,
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 honor, not shame;
Searching my uttermost valleys, fighting each step as they go,
Shooting the wrath of my rapids, scaling my ramparts of snow;
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,
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 seed 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;
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,
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.
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;
That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive.
Scheme | aabbccddCcae Ffggeedxhhii jxiikkgxllmmbbnnoo ppjjqqdxcxrrFfsscC nnffttuumm oo |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11011010101111 111100101111011 110111101111011 111110101111101 110100101101001 110110100101 11011110111101 11111110111111 111111101111111 1010010101101011 1101100101 11110111101111101 1011110111111 111011110110101001 1011010101111 111101100101101 0101101101101 111110111111111 1111011111111 1111011101101 111101101111111 100111111001011 111100111001011 111101101001001 100110111001101 10100111001101 10010101011011 1101111011111001 100111101001101 10100101011001 10111101101111 1001101011011 11010010110011 100110100101 10011010110101 1101010110011 00110110101110011 1100111111 1101101011001011 001111100011111 111111101111011 1011011011011101 10100111100111111 101100101011011 1011101011111 10011110101111 100111101001111 111111100110101 1101110110111 1001010101001 111101011011 101001001101001 1110111101001 1011101010111011 1011110111111 0111011111011111001 0111111110101 11110111000101101 10101111101 111111101111111 1011111011001001 101101110011011 100110101001101 111111100110101 10011110100111 11101101111101110101 10111111110111 11010110110010 110101101110101 11101111000101101 11011011100111 110011100100101 |
Closest metre | Iambic octameter |
Characters | 4,514 |
Words | 861 |
Sentences | 19 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 12, 12, 18, 18, 10, 2 |
Lines Amount | 72 |
Letters per line (avg) | 49 |
Words per line (avg) | 12 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 591 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 144 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 01, 2023
- 4:18 min read
- 419 Views
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"The Law Of The Yukon" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 25 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/32570/the-law-of-the-yukon>.
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