To Frederick H. Randall
CONTENTS
Page
Frontispiece, Joaquin Miller, Dawson, Y. T.
Foreword by Joaquin Miller
The Northern Light[1]
In Winter [2]
Lyric [3]
Dark Days [4]
The Unanswerable [5]
Vain Dreams [6]
December [7]
The Unassuageable [8]
Father Judge S. F. [9]
The Light-o'-Love [10-11]
Two Quests [12]
The Return of the Sun [13]
Klondyke Roses [14]
A Song for the Return of Birds [15]
The Forest Cotillion [16]
The Spruces of the Forest [17]
The Wild Lover [18]
Homeward Bound [19]
Approaching Night [20]
FOREWORD
Songs from a far-away world; a cry from another sphere. To those of us who once experienced the still and pitiless cold, a cry terribly suggestive of the horror-charged gloom, of the icy silence as unbroken as that of unfathomable deeps, of the stern and uncompromising individuality of a disturbed and vengeful North.
Yet one is also reminded that, even in the Klondyke, in due season the brooding spruces are awakened from slumber by the songs of happy-throated songsters, that the melancholy of the forest is brightened by gay flowers. The weight is then lifted from men's hearts; singing is heard in the cabin, and the sound of laughter on the trail. When the mighty Yukon is open to the Behring Sea, the far North is in touch with the world and men are glad.