I felt the fever burnin' in my veins

Packed my bags for the freezing rains

On the steamship Islander with all its crew

Hundreds of miles from everything we knew

Working the sluice every day and night

Panning the river under northern lights

Up the Chilkoot, where the frost grows deep

One thousand stairs that the devil keeps

A ton of gear on a broken back

There’s no turning home, it's a one-way track

Oh, there's yellow in the river, there’s fire in the sky

We're digging for the glory before we have to die

From the Fraser's mouth to the Klondike's cold

We're selling our souls for a handful of gold

My hands are cracked, and my boots are thin

Where the ice ends, the mud begins

I've panned all day till my fingers froze

For a bit of dust where the cold river flows

The merchants are rich, the miners are poor

But we're still knocking on fortune's door

Oh, there’s yellow in the river, there’s fire in the sky

We're digging for the glory before we have to die

From the Fraser’s mouth to the Klondike's cold

We're selling our souls for a handful of gold

They don't tell you ’bout the quiet nights

Or the men who lost their minds to the sights

No names on the crosses in the permafrost

Or a tally of the lives that the glitter cost

Hmm, just a handful of gold

One more pan, one more day

And maybe a handful of gold