There's a cry from out the loneliness — oh, listen,
Honey, listen! Do you hear it, do you fear it, you're a-holding of me so?
You're a-sobbing in your sleep, dear, and your lashes, how they glisten — Do you hear the Little Voices all a-begging me to go?
All a-begging me to leave you.
Day and night they're pleading, praying, On the North-wind, on the West-wind, from the peak and from the plain;
Night and day they never leave me — do you know what they are saying? "He was ours before you got him, and we want him once again."Yes, they're wanting me, they're haunting me, the awful lonely places; They're whining and they're whimpering as if each had a soul;
They're calling from the wilderness, the vast and God-like spaces, The stark and sullen solitudes that sentinel the Pole.
They miss my little camp-fires, ever brightly, bravely gleaming In the womb of desolation, where was never man before;
As comradeless I sought them, lion-hearted, loving, dreaming, And they hailed me as a comrade, and they loved me evermore.
And now they're all a-crying, and it's no use me denying; The spell of them is on me and I'm helpless as a child;
My heart is aching, aching, but I hear them, sleeping, waking; It's the Lure of Little Voices, it's the mandate of the Wild.
I'm afraid to tell you,
Honey,
I can take no bitter leaving; But softly in the sleep-time from your love I'll steal away.
Oh, it's cruel, dearie, cruel, and it's God knows how I'm grieving; But His loneliness is calling, and He knows I must obey.
