8.10.2026 – peerless brightness blinds

peerless brightness blinds
you like a spell; you feel you
could follow it to hell

The men who can’t remember when they learned to swing a pack,
Or in what lawless land the quest began;
The solitary seeker with his grub-stake on his back,
The restless buccaneer of pick and pan.
On the mesas of the Southland, on the tundras of the North,
You will find us, changed in face, but still the same;
And it isn’t need, it isn’t greed that sends us faring forth—
It’s the fever, it’s the glory of the game.

For once you’ve panned the speckled sand and seen the bonny dust,
Its peerless brightness blinds you like a spell;
It’s little else you care about; you go because you must,
And you feel that you could follow it to hell.
You’d follow it in hunger, and you’d follow it in cold;
You’d follow it in solitude and pain;
And when you’re stiff and battened down let someone whisper “Gold,”
You’re lief to rise and follow it again.

From The Prospector as published in Ballads of a Cheechako by Robert William Service (Toronto: William Briggs, 1911).