{
 "id": "robert-w-service/the-heart-of-the-sourdough",
 "title": "The Heart of the Sourdough",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Robert W. Service",
 "poet_slug": "robert-w-service",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Songs of a Sourdough",
 "book_slug": "songs-of-a-sourdough",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 6,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1907,
  "venue": "Songs of a Sourdough (1907)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/songsofsourdoug00serv"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/robert-w-service_songs-of-a-sourdough",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25546",
   "https://archive.org/details/songsofsourdoug00serv"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 24,
  "n_stanzas": 8,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 83,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "There where the mighty mountains bare their fangs unto the moon;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There where the sullen sundogs glare in the snow-bright, bitter noon,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the glacier-gutted streams sweep down at the clarion call of June:",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "There where the livid tundras keep their tryst with the tranquil snows;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There where the Silences are spawned, and the light of hellfire flows",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into the bowl of the midnight sky, violet, amber, and rose:",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "There where the rapids churn and roar, and the ice-floes bellowing run;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where the tortured, twisted rivers of blood rush to the setting sun⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I’ve packed my kit and I’m going, boys, ere another day is done.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I knew it would call, or soon or late, as it calls the whirring wings;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It’s the olden lure, it’s the golden lure, it’s the lure of the timeless things;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And tonight, O God of the trails untrod, how it whines in my heartstrings!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I’m sick to death of your well-groomed gods, your make-believe and your show;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I long for a whiff of bacon and beans, a snug shakedown in the snow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A trail to break, and a life at stake, and another bout with the foe;",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "With the raw-ribbed Wild that abhors all life, the wild that would crush and rend;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I have clinched and closed with the naked North, I have learned to defy and defend;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shoulder to shoulder we’ve fought it out⁠—yet the Wild must win in the end.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I have flouted the Wild. I have followed its lure, fearless, familiar, alone;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By all that the battle means and makes I claim that land for mine own;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet the Wild must win, and a day will come when I shall be overthrown.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Then when as wolf-dogs fight we’ve fought, the lean wolf-land and I;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fought and bled till the snows are red under the reeling sky;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Even as lean wolf-dog goes down will I go down and die.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}