the Heart of the Sourdough

There where the mighty mountains bare their
fangs unto the moon,
There where the sullen sun-dogs glare in the
snow-bright, bitter noon,
And the glacier-glutted streams sweep down at
the clarion call of June.

There where the livid tundras keep their tryst
with the tranquil snows;
There where the silences are spawned, and the
light of hell-fire flows
Into the bowl of the midnight sky, violent, amber
and rose.

There where the rapids churn and roar, and the
ice-floes bellowing run;
Where the tortured, twisted rivers of blood
rush to the setting sun-
I've packed my kit and I'm going, boys, ere
another day is done

*****

I knew it would call, or soon or late, as it calls
the whirring wings;
It's the olden lure, it's the golden lure, it's the
lure of the timeless things,
And to-night, oh, God of the trails untrod, how
it whines in my heart-strings!

I'm sick to death of your well-groomed gods,
your make-believe and your show;
I long for a whiff of bacon and beans, a snug
shakedown in the snow;
A trail to break, and a life at stake, and an-
other bout with the foe

With the raw-ribbed Wild that abhors all life.
the Wild that would crush and rend,
I have clinched and closed with the naked
North, I have learned to defy and defend;
Shoulder to shoulder we have fought it out-
yet the Wild must win in the end.

I have flouted the Wild. I have followed its
lure, fearless, familiar, alone;
By all that the battle means and makes I claim
that land for mine own;
Yet the Wild must win, and a day will come
when I shall be overthrown.

Then when as wolf-dogs fight we've fought, the
lean wolf-land and I;
Fought and bled till the snows are red under
the reeling sky;
Even as lean wolf-dog goes down will I go
down and die.

Robert Service- 1907