The Call of the Wild

I have borrowed this great poem from “Trucker Bob” who has
featured a lot of Robert Service poems on his site, this is truly one
of the great story's told in rhyme.

THE CALL OF THE WILD.

Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there's nothing else to
gaze on,

Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,

Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon,

Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?

Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream streaking
through it,

Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?

Have you strung your soul to silence? Then for God's sake go and
do it;

Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.

Have you wandered in the wilderness, the sagebrush desolation,

The bunch-grass levels where the cattle graze?

Have you whistled bits of rag-time at the end of all creation,

And learned to know the desert's little ways?

Have you camped upon the foothills, have you galloped o'er the
ranges,

Have you roamed the arid sun-lands through and through?

Have you chummed up with the mesa? Do you know its moods and
changes?

Then listen to the Wild -- it's calling you.

Have you known the Great White Silence, not a snow-gemmed twig
aquiver?

(Eternal truths that shame our soothing lies).

Have you broken trail on snowshoes? mushed your huskies up the river,

Dared the unknown, led the way, and clutched the prize?

Have you marked the map's void spaces, mingled with the mongrel
races,

Felt the savage strength of brute in every thew?

And though grim as hell the worst is, can you round it off with
curses?

Then hearken to the Wild -- it's wanting you.

Have you suffered, starved and triumphed, groveled down, yet
grasped at glory,

Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole?

"Done things" just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story,

Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul?

Have you seen God in His splendors, heard the text that nature
renders?

(You'll never hear it in the family pew).

The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things..

Then listen to the Wild -- it's calling you.

They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with their
preaching,

They have soaked you in convention through and through;

They have put you in a showcase; you're a credit to their teaching..

But can't you hear the Wild? -- it's calling you.

Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;

Let us journey to a lonely land I know.

There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam to
guide us,

And the Wild is calling, calling. . .let us go.

Written by Robert Service