The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses

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, 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 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 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 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.