{
 "id": "robert-w-service/the-law-of-the-yukon",
 "title": "The Law of the Yukon",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Robert W. Service",
 "poet_slug": "robert-w-service",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Songs of a Sourdough",
 "book_slug": "songs-of-a-sourdough",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 1,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1907,
  "venue": "Songs of a Sourdough (1907)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/songsofsourdoug00serv"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/robert-w-service_songs-of-a-sourdough",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25546",
   "https://archive.org/details/songsofsourdoug00serv"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 74,
  "n_stanzas": 5,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 80,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Strong for the red rage of battle; sane, for I harry them sore;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Swift as the panther in triumph, fierce as the bear in defeat,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sired of a bulldog parent, steeled in the furnace heat.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Send me the best of your breeding, lend me your chosen ones;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Them will I take to my bosom, them will I call my sons;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But the others⁠—the misfits, the failures⁠—I trample under my feet.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dissolute, damned, and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ye would send me the spawn of your gutters⁠—Go! take back your spawn again.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "“Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From my ruthless throne I have ruled alone for a million years and a day;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Hugging my mighty treasure, waiting for man to come:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till he swept like a turbid torrent, and after him swept⁠—the scum.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The pallid pimp of the deadline, the enervate of the pen,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One by one I weeded them out, for all that I sought was⁠—Men.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One by one I dismayed them, frighting them sore with my glooms;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One by one I betrayed them unto my manifold dooms.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Drowned them like rats in my rivers, starved them like curs on my plains,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rotted the flesh that was left them, poisoned the blood in their veins;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Burst with my winter upon them, searing forever their sight,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lashed them with fungus-white faces, whimpering wild in the night;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Staggering blind through the storm-whirl, stumbling mad through the snow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Frozen stiff in the ice pack, brittle and bent like a bow;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Featureless, formless, forsaken, scented by wolves in their flight,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Left for the wind to make music through ribs that are glittering white;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gnawing the black crust of failure, searching the pit of despair,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Crooking the toe in the trigger, trying to patter a prayer;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Going outside with an escort, raving with lips all afoam;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Writing a cheque for a million, drivelling feebly of home;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lost like a louse in the burning⁠ ⁠… or else in tented town",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Seeking a drunkard’s solace, sinking and sinking down;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Steeped in the slime at the bottom, dead to a decent world,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lost ’mid the human flotsam, far on the frontier hurled;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the camp at the bend of the river, with its dozen saloons aglare,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Its gambling dens a-riot, its gramophones all a-blare;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Crimped with the crimes of a city, sin-ridden and bridled with lies,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the hush of my mountained vastness, in the flush of my midnight skies.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Plague-spots, yet tools of my purpose, so natheless I suffer them thrive,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Crushing my Weak in their clutches, that only my Strong may survive.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "“But the others, the men of my mettle, the men who would ’stablish my fame,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unto its ultimate issue, winning me honour, not shame;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Searching my uttermost valleys, fighting each step as they go,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shooting the wrath of my rapids, scaling my ramparts of snow;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ripping the guts of my mountains, looting the beds of my creeks,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Them will I take to my bosom, and speak as a mother speaks.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am the land that listens, I am the land that broods;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Long have I waited lonely, shunned as a thing accurst,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Monstrous, moody, pathetic, the last of the lands and the first;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Visioning campfires at twilight, sad with a longing forlorn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Feeling my womb o’er-pregnant with the seed of cities unborn.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I wait for the men who will win me⁠—and I will not be won in a day;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I will not be won by weaklings, subtile, suave, and mild,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But by men with the hearts of vikings, and the simple faith of a child;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Desperate, strong, and resistless, unthrottled by fear or defeat,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "“Lofty I stand from each sister land, patient and wearily wise,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With the weight of a world of sadness in my quiet, passionless eyes;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dreaming alone of a people, dreaming alone of a day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When men shall not rape my riches, and curse me and go away;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Making a bawd of my bounty, fouling the hand that gave⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till I rise in my wrath and I sweep on their path and I stamp them into a grave.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dreaming of men who will bless me, of women esteeming me good,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of children born in my borders, of radiant motherhood;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of cities leaping to stature, of fame like a flag unfurled,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As I pour the tide of my riches in the eager lap of the world.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "This is the Law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dissolute, damned, and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This is the Will of the Yukon⁠—Lo! how she makes it plain!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}