d 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
a-quiver?
(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 grovelled, 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 splendours, 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.

THE LONE TRAIL

_Ye who know the Lone Trail fain would follow it,
Though it lead to glory or the darkness of the pit.
Ye who take the Lone Trail, bid your love good-bye;
The Lone Trail, the Lone Trail follow till you die._

The trails of the world be countless, and most of the trails be tried;
You tread on the heels of the many, till you come where the ways
divide;
And one lies safe in the sunlight, and the other is dreary and wan,
Yet you look aslant at t