Frank J. Cotter

“ But the Northland gets a sterner breed To fuse in its harder mould. It's the breed of men that don't know fail; That's the breed of men that hit the trail For the fabled land of gold. They're a sturdy, fearless, fighting lot And they play the game to win. They fall for women, wine, the game And win or lose, they smile the same And to quit is their only sin. ”

“ Where the sentinel pines in grandeur Murmur to the glacier stream As it, ice-gorged, gluts the canyon, Never brightened by the gleam Of sun at brightest noon day, Nor moon of Arctic night, And whose only link with Heaven Is the fitful Northern Light. Where the Whistler shrills in triumph And the Big Horn dreams in peace, Where the Brown Bear skulks to cover Up where silence holds the lease; Where the land is as God left it Nor has known the tread of man, There's a treasure ledge a-waiting— Go and find it if you can. If your heart be steeled to triumph Nor beats less at your defeat ”

“ Hast a place on earth to breed such men Each for his own deeds blamed? If you'll give me a place, I'll breed a race That hell may not be shamed. The God King sighed as he searched the plat And the map of the earth below; I have given a place for every race In the belt from snow to snow. I have given a home to each bird and beast For even the fox has its hole, I have given all land to the sons of man And I've builded a home for his soul. ”

“ If you can beat the Row, the Game, the Dance-hall And all men's pleasures, that you know are sin; If you can live alone, and not get lonesome Nor heed the "lady" when she says "come in": If you can pick a winner from the "wild cats" And hold and hope when everything looks blue; If you can give up everything you've ever cared for Then ALASKA IS THE ONLY PLACE FOR YOU.
US FOR SAM While all Europe is a shambles And the whole world is at war, And half the land the sun shines on Is drenched in human gore ”

“ There's a lure to the land of the poppy, There's a lure to the land of your birth, You swear you abhor it, and yet you'll long for it As no other land on this earth. There's the lure of the snow mantled vastness, There's the lure of each valley and hill, Of friends that you've met, that you'll never forget And you'll want to come back, and you will. ”

“ The male instinct to have a mate, to love, to guard, to hold, The one instinct that's left to us, that triumphs over gold. With strength enough to build a home when once you get a wife Bear gently with her follies, but guard her with your life; Crowd full her heart with loving, yet hold a guarded rein, Lest ye two now that rate as one, again be counted twain. And if she come from Outside Camp, remember all is new And give her time to find herself, teach her to lean on you. And should homesickness grip her, and you find your wife in tears Forget the jest and love her, remember your first years. ”

“ There is never a sin for lust of flesh Nor sin for a man struck blow, And the red blood crime of the olden time Has passed with the long ago. Hell's motley crew is scarce worth coal When they come to the thing called death; They squat on the coals with the real damned souls And listen with bated breath, To the tales of the earth, when the world was new, When a man had to fight for his own, When he took his wife at the risk of his life And killed for a half-baked bone. Now I'd build a place where a man might sin For the sake of his own desires ”

“ As long as snow slides claim their toll And glaciers split and rend, And sweepers turn the flimsy craft And trails come to an end; As long as flashing Northern Lights Flame in the Arctic sky, Your boldest ones, your bravest sons Come North to win or die. As long as lust of wealth obtains And gold will buy all things, And bank accounts but mark the line 'Twixt shovel stiffs and kings; As long as fancy rides free reined And distant fields seem fair, They'll seek the ship and make the trip To the land of Do and Dare. ”

“ The longing for wide open spaces, The perfume of evening camp fires; The hunting for treasure unfound yet The knocking at fortune's own gate; The doing of deeds for the joy that it breeds Were all used by the Devil as bait. The summers besprinkled with sunshine, The hillsides a riot of bloom With meadows a color shot grandeur And valleys as still as a tomb. With mountains of cloud-encased beauty Or with stars shining down on it all It's the trails we don't know that call us to go And no wonder man heeded the call. The winters, the trails all unbroken, The far fields that beckon and call ”

“ Some pine for the breeze of the northern seas And the sound of the Arctic's roar. The things that men love be countless But they're seldom the same with two, For the things I care for most of all Might never appeal to you. Some men run to wine and woman, Some long for a wife and a home, And he drifts with the tide, unsatisfied, Who leaves these things to roam. ”

“ When the time has arrived that the wise ones Have told us the last shall be first; When the men who've made good are rewarded And the losers are turned loose in Hell; That's the time that a lot will be learning The true reason and cause that they fell. And I wonder when Peter gets busy As he works out the tenement plan, And when Heaven's thrown free for location Will he confine the locations to man? If he does, my claim's open for jumping For I can't figure Heaven complete, If the dim distant trails of the sky land Are not pattered by malamutes' feet. ”

“ You give your all, and you slave your life In a struggle to hold one man; You think you're paid if he call you wife And be true to you for a span. You keep his house and you bear his child And you walk with your head held high But most of his love, and his kisses go To the woman that you pass by. The favors you give, I sell for gold, And men prize what costs them high; You never will learn that love goes out With the tear in a woman's eye ”

“ And if one deals in hellish schemes, that one must stamp your worth, You made a shambles of that land, you moved hell up on earth. The cries of mangled maidens, the mutilated child, The tears of butchered mothers, would drive an earth man wild, And thru it all proclaiming, you were the tool of God— O pardner in this orgy, no one suspected fraud. You butchered, maimed and pillaged, hell never saw such sights As the Prussian Guard remembers, on those first Belgian nights. ”

“ If you can eat your dogs, and still keep moving And beat the rest, and hold the stampede's pace; If you can stake and dig alone, unaided And hold your ground, if needs be with a gun And find the gold and have some lawyer steal it, And lose, and start again, and call it fun. If you can go a year on mouldy bacon And fight the scurvy off with bayo beans; If you can jump your socks and do your washing And smile the while you patch your threadbare jeans; If you can laugh when sordid hunger mocks you And smile while passing strangers eat your grub ”

“ It seems that it grows stronger, each year added to our life— It's the hankering of the white man for a Pal, a Home, a Wife. Man was not meant to live alone, why quarrel with Nature's laws, God gave you strength to build a home, wherefor then do you pause? Go forward like your father did, go forth and seek your mate, For till you know a wife and home, you know not Heaven's Gate. It's the deep inherent longing for a baby on your knee, For the sound of children's voices, beneath your own fig tree. ”

“ Life waits in peace the cleanup, you pass up Outside joys, And the tempter's voice is silenced by the music of her voice. Then you're a true Alaskan, with a home won from the North, God grant you children's voices when the violets peep forth, And in the summer evening, beneath the midnight sun, May your heart grow closer to her, when the water starts to run. ”

“ This Land's not the land of the weakling And the men up here know what we need, And we're sick of your bunch from the Outside Who's only incentive is greed. We've stood for Pinchot's conservation And we've stood for your carpet-bag horde Who have grabbed off the jobs in Alaska As a sort of political reward. But, Sam, take a tip from a Roughneck, Go slow now and don't crowd your hand Or some day you may find that the orphan Has quit creeping and learned how to stand. ”

“ That the patient drudge who sits at home And learns to save and to mend Can never hold the light of love But is doomed to lose in the end. So I follow the old dishonored trade, Bedecked in garments fine, And the cream of the earth is saved for me In raiment and food and wine. And life to me is a merry game Tho, sometimes, I weep and sigh, For deep down in your heart, do you envy me The woman that you pass by? ”

“ You may mix up in a poker game, or try the dance hall's lure But you're fighting off a feeling, that the old cures cannot cure. You've got that longing feeling that there's nothing satisfies, And your pard can't interest you, no matter how he tries, You're lonesome, moody, restless, out at Camp, or in the Town Your mind will not rest easy, and your troubles will not drown. ”

“ As one who feels his race is run, whose day is of the past, I recognize your genius, and abdicate at last. I go and leave you master, and I feel it's just as well, For Hades lacks its master, until you rule in hell. ”

“ THE BIRTH OF THE LAND For a thousand years the Devil crouched On the white hot flags of hell: For a thousand years the Devil cursed The imps that had chained him well; For a thousand years the Devil sulked And planned with his hell-trained brain Of the things he'd do, when his term was thru, And freed from the blistering chain. ”

“ I don't suppose a man will live to beat it, Some day we'll quit this land of ice and snow, And when the Devil gits us, And finds a place that fits us, And we're working on the sulphur beds below, I know I'll like Alaska. ”

“ Who live on lone creeks all alone here Where the living and dying are hard, And where oft times their only companion Is a malamute pup for a pard. He's a real chum with things coming easy, He's a pal with things breaking tough, He's a hell-roaring fighting companion When somebody starts something rough. ”

“ I bring to heel the ones that you love And smiling I shear them of wealth. To garner the wealth that you hold in store I must keep me surpassing fair, For the life that I lead is an open book And the game that I deal is square. ”

“ When every Nation counts the men It knows are tried and true We send this message to you, Sam, "Alaska stands with you." You never treated us quite right— You grabbed away our coal, You reserved all our fire wood And what we've used, we've stole. ”

“ Can you watch your whole world melt away And still smiling, fortune greet? Will your heart and brain and sinew Crowd you on, when hunger's pain Gnaws your belly and you're beaten, Can you lose, and fight again? Can you raise the cup of fortune To your lips and bravely quaff The draught she has prepared for you And win or lose and laugh? ”

“ Then knowing full well that man would not go To a Land so forlorn to behold, He salted the hillsides and some of the streams With nuggets and traces of gold. He tinted the hills with a green copper ledge And covered the valleys with game, All this for a lure, then the Devil felt sure That the white man would fall for the same. THE LAND The lure of the little known places Still calls, as it called to your sires ”

“ Cause I know it would never seem home-like No matter how golden the strand, If I lose out that pal-loving feeling Of a malamute's nose in my hand. And it's that way with lots of Alaskans These men of our own last frontier, Who tear into nature unaided And who scarce know the meaning of fear. ”

“ They come here wild, athirst for gold They would win and run away, They lose the stake they brought along And then they have to stay. Here each one follows his own bent, The mines, the hills, the mart, Work's but a name, the end's the same, The country steals your heart. ”

“ As long as chance for fortune's smile Can be centered in one throw, This is the truth, the Nation's youth Will hear the call and go. As long as water runs down hill And smoke goes up from fire; As long as pleasure precedes pain And women love for hire ”

“ Dreaming alone of childhood days, Regretting some things that are past, Recalling lost opportunities, And chances too good to last. Living your whole life over, Recalling the daily grind, Thanking your God that it's over, Glad that you've left it behind. But still regretting your errors, Sad for some things you have done, Wishing that you had coppered some plays As you count them one by one. Now living a life, clean, decent, For man never sins alone, Getting a grip on your ego, Coming at last to your own. ”

“ As long as lure o' placer gold Brings North the best ye breed, As long as tales of camps and trails Are planted with your seed, As long as red blood courses thru And warms adventure's sons, They'll sally forth, bound for the North, Misfortune's chosen ones. ”

“ Our Uncle Sam owns all the cables, And the prices he gets are a sin, It costs more for a word to Seattle Than it does from Salt Lake to Berlin. Our coast line is rugged and broken, A menace to each ship that sails, But Sam has no money for coast lights, They get the same treatment as trails. And Alaska is some husky orphan, We can reach from the Gulf to B.C., We could stand with one foot in Kansas While the other was washed by the sea. We're allowed only one voice in Congress, And that one bereft of a vote, And has to get some one's permission Ere he loose a protest from his throat. ”

“ You dream and you hunt all summer Till you notice a chill in the air, Then you think of your warm snug cabin And you feel that you'd rather be there. Then you head over unblazed passes Till at last you herd with your own, And though you located no pangar You are better for being alone. ”