Way Up In The High Artic Poem by Francis Duggan

Way up in the high Artic where the cold north winds blow
Young men flocked in their search for gold one hundred years ago
In Winter the musk oxen paw for fodder through the snow
In temperatures quite often fifty degrees below

The freezing point of zero by any standards cold
We've heard so many stories of young men who toiled for gold
Stories with happy endings and of grief and tragedy
The spirit of adventure is in the young and free.

Way up in the high Artic up north and far away
The gold rush days a memory few toil for gold today
But the stories, poems and ballads where men risked their all for gain
Are re-told and recited and with us still remain.

Way up in the high Artic home of the Polar bear
And wolf and moose and lemming and the elusive snow shoe hare
And snowy owl and artic fox and where caribou roam free
And where seal and walrus dive to great depths in the cold Artic sea.

And from that vast and rugged landscape where the mighty Yukon flow
The stories are still with us from a century ago
Of the young men who sought their fortunes great adventurers in their day
In that Land of the Midnight Sun up north and far away.