Classic Poem

There's a voice forever calling through the daylight and the darkness,
Through the roar of city traffic and the city's dust and heat;
Though my ears are dull with hurry and the chains bind my feet,
I can hear it in my dreaming calling poignantly and sweet:
Come out into the Northland, come out and up and far,
Where the wide winds cross the barrens, where the wild white waters are,
(Use the lichen for a compass and the Great North Star);
Where the forests and the muskegs and the still lakes lie,
And the long blue mountain billows meet the sky.

There's a cabin in a clearing and an open door;
There's a tepee in the hemlocks and skins on the floor;
There's an igloo up the fiord and a man I know
Mushing slowly homeward through the blinding snow.

So pack up your duffle and strike the long trail
To the land of rat and beaver and netsik and whale;
Your friends will never miss you till you come back
With your heart full of sweetness and dreams in your pack.

(And one day, maybe, there comes a grimy letter from Old George).
“Hello, Brother,
What's keepin' yer so long?
Yer ain't forgotten, have yer, where yer belong?
Bill was askin yesterday when you comin' in;
Missed yer funny face an' yer all-weather grin.
If yer want to smell wood-smoke come up here—
The skeeters are sure bad this time o' year.
Listen, Old Timer, can yer hear me down there?
Can yer hear the huskies a-howlin yer name?
They be feelin' mighty lonesome, I reckon,
And, hopin' yer the same—”

Not beautiful, you'll call it, nor eloquent nor wise,
But somehow I can't hear it, but the smoke gets in my eyes.