Xi'an's Og

In a recent thesis I reviewed, the author had included the following poem as a quote—in connection with the Klondike Gold Rush, when miners kept a live sourdough starter in a tin box—:

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…

The Heart of the Sourdough (1907)
by Robert W. Service