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.
Related poetry:
- A Sourdough Story Hark to the Sourdough story, told at sixty below, When the pipes are lit and we smoke and spit Into the campfire glow. Rugged are we and hoary, and statin’ a general rule, A genooine Sourdough story Ain’t no yarn for the Sunday School. A Sourdough came to stake his claim in Heav’n one morning […]...
- Have you got a Brook in your little heart Have you got a Brook in your little heart, Where bashful flowers blow, And blushing birds go down to drink, And shadows tremble so And nobody knows, so still it flows, That any brook is there, And yet your little draught of life Is daily drunken there Why, look out for the little brook in […]...
- No Sourdough To be a bony feed Sourdough You must, by Yukon Law, Have killed a moose, And robbed a sluice, AND BUNKED UP WITH A SQUAW. . . . Alas! Sourdough I’ll never be. Oh, sad is my excuse: My shooting’s so damn bad, you see. . . I’ve never killed a moose....
- My Heart's In The Highlands Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North, The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth; Wherever I wander, wherever I rove, The hills of the Highlands for ever I love. My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here; My heart’s in the Highlands a-chasing the deer; A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the […]...
- The Land God Forgot The lonely sunsets flare forlorn Down valleys dreadly desolate; The lordly mountains soar in scorn As still as death, as stern as fate. The lonely sunsets flame and die; The giant valleys gulp the night; The monster mountains scrape the sky, Where eager stars are diamond-bright. So gaunt against the gibbous moon, Piercing the silence […]...
- The True Encounter “Wolf!” cried my cunning heart At every sheep it spied, And roused the countryside. “Wolf! Wolf!”-and up would start Good neighbours, bringing spade And pitchfork to my aid. At length my cry was known: Therein lay my release. I met the wolf alone And was devoured in peace....
- Cameron's Heart The diggings were just in their glory when Alister Cameron came, With recommendations, he told me, from friends and a parson ‘at hame’; He read me his recommendations he called them a part of his plant The first one was signed by an Elder, the other by Cameron’s aunt. The meenister called him ‘ungodly a […]...
- Trixie Dogs have a sense beyond our ken – At least my little Trixie had: Tail-wagging when I laughed, and when I sighed, eyes luminously sad. And if I planned to go away, She’d know, oh, days and days before: Aye, dogs I think are sometimes fey, They seem to sense our fate in store. Now […]...
- Heart of God O great heart of God, Once vague and lost to me, Why do I throb with your throb to-night, In this land, eternity? O little heart of God, Sweet intruding stranger, You are laughing in my human breast, A Christ-child in a manger. Heart, dear heart of God, Beside you now I kneel, Strong heart […]...
- Clancy Of The Mounted Police In the little Crimson Manual it’s written plain and clear That who would wear the scarlet coat shall say good-bye to fear; Shall be a guardian of the right, a sleuth-hound of the trail In the little Crimson Manual there’s no such word as “fail” Shall follow on though heavens fall, or hell’s top-turrets freeze, […]...
- It's thoughts and just One Heart It’s thoughts and just One Heart And Old Sunshine about Make frugal Ones Content And two or three for Company Upon a Holiday Crowded as Sacrament Books when the Unit Spare the Tenant long eno’ A Picture if it Care Itself a Gallery too rare For needing more Flowers to keep the Eyes from going […]...
- The Heart of Australia When the wars of the world seemed ended, and silent the distant drum, Ten years ago in Australia, I wrote of a war to come: And I pictured Australians fighting as their fathers fought of old For the old things, pride or country, for God or the Devil or gold. And they lounged on the […]...
- Wolf Knife In the mid August, in the second year Of my First Polar Expedition, the snow and ice of winter Almost upon us, Kantiuk and I Attempted to dash the sledge Along Crispin Bay, searching again for relics Of the Frankline Expedition. Now a storm blew, And we turned back, and we struggled slowly In snow, […]...
- The Wanderlust The Wanderlust has lured me to the seven lonely seas, Has dumped me on the tailing-piles of dearth; The Wanderlust has haled me from the morris chairs of ease, Has hurled me to the ends of all the earth. How bitterly I’ve cursed it, oh, the Painted Desert knows, The wraithlike heights that hug the […]...
- My Heart and I I. ENOUGH! we’re tired, my heart and I. We sit beside the headstone thus, And wish that name were carved for us. The moss reprints more tenderly The hard types of the mason’s knife, As heaven’s sweet life renews earth’s life With which we’re tired, my heart and I. II. You see we’re tired, my […]...
- Come O'er the Sea Come o’er the sea, Maiden with me, Mine through sunshine, storm, and snows; Seasons may roll, But the true soul Burns the same, where’er it goes. Let fate frown on, so we love and part not; ‘Tis life where thou art, ’tis death were thou are not. Then come o’er the sea, Maiden with me, […]...
- The Spell Of The Yukon I wanted the gold, and I sought it, I scrabbled and mucked like a slave. Was it famine or scurvy I fought it; I hurled my youth into a grave. I wanted the gold, and I got it Came out with a fortune last fall, Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it, And somehow […]...
- I'm Scared Of It All I’m scared of it all, God’s truth! so I am; It’s too big and brutal for me. My nerve’s on the raw and I don’t give a damn For all the “hoorah” that I see. I’m pinned between subway and overhead train, Where automobillies swoop down: Oh, I want to go back to the timber […]...
- The Nostomaniac On the ragged edge of the world I’ll roam, And the home of the wolf shall be my home, And a bunch of bones on the boundless snows The end of my trail. . . who knows, who knows! I’m dreaming to-night in the fire-glow, alone in my study tower, My books battalioned around me, […]...
- The Traveller-Heart (To a Man who maintained that the Mausoleum is the Stateliest Possible Manner of Interment) I would be one with the dark, dark earth: Follow the plough with a yokel tread. I would be part of the Indian corn, Walking the rows with the plumes o’erhead. I would be one with the lavish earth, Eating […]...
- Manitoba Childe Roland LAST night a January wind was ripping at the shingles over our house and whistling a wolf Song under the eaves. I sat in a leather rocker and read to a six-year-old girl the Browning poem, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. And her eyes had the haze of autumn hills and it was […]...
- The Heart of Night When all the stars are sown Across the night-blue space, With the immense unknown, In silence face to face. We stand in speechless awe While Beauty marches by, And wonder at the Law Which wears such majesty. How small a thing is man In all that world-sown vast, That he should hope or plan Or […]...
- Heart O' The North And when I come to the dim trail-end, I who have been Life’s rover, This is all I would ask, my friend, Over and over and over: A little space on a stony hill With never another near me, Sky o’ the North that’s vast and still, With a single star to cheer me; Star […]...
- The Big Heart “Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold.” – From an essay by W. B. Yeats Big heart, Wide as a watermelon, But wise as birth, There is so much abundance In the people I have: Max, Lois, Joe, Louise, Joan, Marie, Dawn, Arlene, Father Dunne, And all in their short […]...
- Sweet Skepticism of the Heart Sweet Skepticism of the Heart That knows and does not know And tosses like a Fleet of Balm Affronted by the snow Invites and then retards the Truth Lest Certainty be sere Compared with the delicious throe Of transport thrilled with Fear...
- Canine Conversation If dogs could speak, O Mademoiselle, What funny stories they could tell! For instance, take your little “peke,” How awkward if the dear could speak! How sad for you and all of us, Who round you flutter, flirt and fuss; Folks think you modest, mild and meek. . . But would they – if Fi-Fi […]...
- Sonnet 34 – With the same heart, I said, I'll answer thee With the same heart, I said, I’ll answer thee As those, when thou shalt call me by my name- Lo, the vain promise! is the same, the same, Perplexed and ruffled by life’s strategy? When called before, I told how hastily I dropped my flowers or brake off from a game, To run and answer […]...
- Sonnet 133: Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan For that deep wound it gives my friend and me! Is’t not enough to torture me alone, But slave to slavery my sweet’st friend must be? Me from my self thy cruel eye hath taken, And my next self thou harder hast engrossed. Of him, myself, […]...
- The Trapper's Christmas Eve It’s mighty lonesome-like and drear. Above the Wild the moon rides high, And shows up sharp and needle-clear The emptiness of earth and sky; No happy homes with love a-glow; No Santa Claus to make believe: Just snow and snow, and then more snow; It’s Christmas Eve, it’s Christmas Eve. And here am I where […]...
- A poor torn heart a tattered heart A poor torn heart a tattered heart That sat it down to rest Nor noticed that the Ebbing Day Flowed silver to the West Nor noticed Night did soft descend Nor Constellation burn Intent upon the vision Of latitudes unknown. The angels happening that way This dusty heart espied Tenderly took it up from toil […]...
- Into My Heart an Air that Kills Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went And cannot come again....
- The Ballad Of Gum-Boot Ben He was an old prospector with a vision bleared and dim. He asked me for a grubstake, and the same I gave to him. He hinted of a hidden trove, and when I made so bold To question his veracity, this is the tale he told. “I do not seek the copper streak, nor yet […]...
- A Process In The Weather Of The Heart A process in the weather of the heart Turns damp to dry; the golden shot Storms in the freezing tomb. A weather in the quarter of the veins Turns night to day; blood in their suns Lights up the living worm. A process in the eye forwarns The bones of blindness; and the womb Drives […]...
- Winter Song The browns, the olives, and the yellows died, And were swept up to heaven; where they glowed Each dawn and set of sun till Christmastide, And when the land lay pale for them, pale-snowed, Fell back, and down the snow-drifts flamed and flowed. From off your face, into the winds of winter, The sun-brown and […]...
- The Pigeons Of St. Marks Something’s wrong in Pigeon-land; ‘Tisn’t as it used to be, When the pilgrim, corn in hand, Courted us with laughing glee; When we crooned with pinions furled, Tamest pigeons in the world. When we packed each arm and shoulder, Never deeming man a menace; Surly birds were never bolder Than our dainty doves of Venice: […]...
- A Coin YOUR western heads here cast on money, You are the two that fade away together, Partners in the mist. Lunging buffalo shoulder, Lean Indian face, We who come after where you are gone Salute your forms on the new nickel. You are To us: The past. Runners On the prairie: Good-by....
- Abandoned Dog They dumped it on the lonely road, Then like a streak they sped; And as along the way I strode I thought that it was dead: And then I saw that yelping pup Rise, race to catch them up. You know how silly wee dogs are. It thought they were in fun. Trying to overtake […]...
- Dear Heart, Why Will You Use Me So? Dear heart, why will you use me so? Dear eyes that gently me upbraid, Still are you beautiful – but O, How is your beauty raimented! Through the clear mirror of your eyes, Through the soft sigh of kiss to kiss, Desolate winds assail with cries The shadowy garden where love is. And soon shall […]...
- Dogheads AMONG the grassroots In the moonlight, who comes circling, red tongues and high noses? Is one of ’em Buck and one of ’em White Fang? In the moonlight, who are they, cross-legged, telling their stories over and over? Is one of ’em Martin Eden and one of ’em Larsen the Wolf? Let an epitaph read: […]...
- How Is Your Heart? during my worst times on the park benches in the jails or living with whores I always had this certain contentment- I wouldn’t call it happiness- it was more of an inner balance that settled for whatever was occuring and it helped in the factories and when relationships went wrong with the girls. it helped […]...