The Heart of the Sourdough + 

There where the mighty mountains bare their fangs unto the moon; + 

There where the sullen sundogs glare in the snow-bright, bitter noon, + 

And the glacier-gutted 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 hellfire flows + 

Into the bowl of the midnight sky, violet, 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 tonight, O God of the trails untrod, how it whines in my heartstrings! + 

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 another 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’ve 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. + 