(Far Away Feelin') the Spell of the Yukon (2021 Remastered Version)

Spell of the Yukon - Jim Reeves

I wanted the gold and I sought it

I scrabbled and mucked like a slave

Was it famine or scurvy I fought it

I hurled my youth into a grave

I wanted the gold and I got it

Came out with a fortune last fall

Yet somehow life's not what I thought it

And somehow the gold isn't all

No there's the land have you seen it

The it's cursedest land that I know

From the big dizzy mountains that screen it

To the deep deathlike valleys below

Some say god was tired when he made it

Some say it's a fine land to shun

Maybe but there's some as would trade it

Land for no on earth and I'm one

You come to get rich damned good reason

You feel like an exile at first

You hate it like hell for a season

And then you are worse than the worst

It grips you like some kinds of sinning

It twists you from foe to a friend

It seems it's been since the beginning

It seems it will be to the end

I've stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow

That's plumb-full of hush to the brim

I've watched the big husky sun wallow

In crimson and gold and grow dim

Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming

And the stars tumbled out neck and crop

And I've thought that I surely was dreaming

With the peace o' world piled on top

The summer no sweeter was ever

The sunshiny woods all a thrill

The gray ling a leap in the river

The bighorn asleep on the hill

The strong life that never knows harness

The wilds where the caribou call

The freshness the freedom the fairness

O god how I'm stuck on it all

The winter the brightness that blinds you

The white land locked tight as a drum

The cold fear that follows and finds you

The silence that bludgeons you dumb

The snows that are older than history

The woods where the weird shadows slant

The stillness the moonlight the mystery

I've bade 'em goodbye but I can't

There's a land where the mountains are nameless

And the rivers all run god knows where

There are lives that are erring and aimless

And deaths that just hang by a hair

There are hardships that nobody reckons

There are valleys unpeopled and still

There's a land oh it beckons and beckons

And I want to go back and I will

They're making my money diminish

I'm sick of the taste of champagne

Thank god when I'm skinned to a finish

I'll pike to the Yukon again

I'll fight and you bet it's no sham-fight

It's hell but I've been there before

And it's better than this by a great site

So me for the Yukon once more

There's gold and it's haunting and haunting

It's luring me on as of old

Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting

So much as just finding the gold

It's the great big broad land 'way up yonder

It's the forests where silence has lease

It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder

It's the stillness that fills me with peace