The Wild Is Calling

Have you ever gazed on spectacular grandeurs where there's nothing else to look at?

Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon,

Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?

Have you swept the valley with green streams streaking through it,

Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?

Have you strung your soul to silence?

Have you wandered in the wilderness, the sagebrush desolation,

The bunch-grass levels where the cattle graze?

Have you whistled 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 over the ranges,

Have you roamed the arid sun-lands through and through?

Then listen to the Wild -- it's calling you.

Have you broken trail on snowshoes?

Dared the unknown, led the way, and clutched the prize?

Have you marked the map's void spaces, mingled with the mongrel races,

Have you suffered, starved and triumphed, grovelled down, yet grasped at glory,

Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole?

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.