28. Yukon

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A song in praise of the beauty, solitude, and rigor of the subarctic boreal forests and tundra lands in the North American Cordillera.

Text: lines selected from early Yukon poems by Robert W. Service (1874-1958):

Flat as a drum-head stretch the haggard snows;
The mighty skies are palisades of light;
The stars are blurred; the silence grows and grows;
Vaster and vaster vaults the icy night.

I am the land that listens, I am the land that broods;
Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods.

The summer—no sweeter was ever:
The sunshiny woods all athrill;
The grayling aleap in the river,
The bighorn asleep on the hill.
The strong life that never knows harness;
The wilds where the caribou call;
The freshness, the freedom, the fairness-- …

I am the land that listens, I am the land that broods;
Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods.

The winter! The brightness that blinds you,
The white land locked tight as a drum,
The cold fear that follows and finds you,
The silence that bludgeons you dumb.
The snows that are older than history,
The woods where the weird shadows slant;
The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery, …

I am the land that listens, I am the land that broods;
Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods.

Musicians: SATB chorus, sometimes divisi, a cappella.

Length: 4:40