George Sterling

“ Oh, come! and thou shalt dream with me
By violet foam at twilight tost
On strands of ocean islets lost
To prows that seek them wearily,
O’er seas by questing sunsets crost.
All dreams that Hope hath promised Love,
All beauty thou hast sought in vain,
All joy held once and lost again,
These, and the mystery thereof,
I guard beneath the sundering main.
So rang that crystal cry, as from afar,
Clear as the voice of Heaven’s whitest star,
And strong Duandon pondered, with his gaze{14}
Set like twin stars above those azure ways. ”

“ Young as a wind and ancient as the air;
August he saw the unending ranks uproll,
With joy and wonder mastering the soul,
With marvel on the hearing and the sight—
Green fires, and billows tremulous with light,
With shaken soul of light and shuddering blaze
Of leaping emerald and cold chrysoprase,—
The surge and suspiration of the sea,
Great waters choral of eternity,{11}—
The mighty dirge that will not cease for day
Nor all the stars’ invincible array,—
The thunder that hath set, since Time began,
Its sorrow in the lonely heart of man. ”

“ And all its gulfs gape eager as the grave,
Sure of your flesh at last,
O human hearts! stand fast!
And though untested nerve and sinew shrink,
Trapped and astounded at the final brink—
Tho’ hostile guns the march to silence toll,
Beyond it lies the goal,
And past the moment’s tremor smiles the soul.{103}
O brother hearts and brave,
We know you strong to save,
And strong to serve the Star
That past the dusk of war
Imperishable gleams.
And O! how little seems
The price of death men wait so glad to pay
To hold undesecrated every ray! ”

“ Makes ancient music to their awful heights.
O quenchless and insuperable lights!
What life shall meet your gaze and thence go free
From litten midnights of eternity
To havens open to your final flights?
Abides nor goal nor ultimate of peace,
Nor lifts a beacon on the cosmic deep
To guide our wandering world on seas sublime,
Nor any night to grant the soul release,
Swung as a pendulum from life to sleep,
From sleep to life, from Timelessness to Time. ”

“ For Lilith would have bound thee in her hair{37}—
Smiling at dusk inscrutably,
And Circe gathered such for gods to wear,
In evenings when the moon,
A sorceress who steals in white
Along the cloudy parapets of night,
In every glade her ghostly pearl hath strewn.
Thou art as violet-wan
As eyelids of a vestal dead and meek.
If after-life can come to blossoms gone,
Surely Persephone
Shall crown her brow with thee,
In realms where burns nor star nor sun
To show the dead what amaranths to seek. ”

“ Translucent waters cover loops of jade.
Beyond, the sea-scourged walls uphold
A mount of granite, steep and harsh, where cling
Along its rugged length
The cypress legions, melancholy, old.
O’er wasting cliff and strand
In terraced emerald they stand
Against the sky,
Each elder tree a king
Whose fame the wordless billows magnify.
A thousand winters of achieving storm
Moulded each mighty form{71}
To beauty and to strength:
A thousand more shall raven ere they die. ”

“ Beyond that realm of jade and jade-bound bays,
He saw the sapphire fields of ocean blaze;
Heard the alliant waters chant their rune
Before the turquoise battlements of noon,
Where evening armies of the mist would roam
As twilight mixed its purple with the foam,—
Where sunlight, checked in its torrential leap,
Would froth at dawn about some cloudland steep. ”

“ ALDEBARAN AT DUSK
Thou art the star for which all evening waits—
O star of peace, come tenderly and soon!
As for the drowsy and enchanted moon,
She dreams in silver at the eastern gates
Ere yet she brim with light the blue estates
Abandoned by the eagles of the noon.
But shine thou swiftly on the darkling dune
And woodlands where the twilight hesitates. ”

“ The spirit of that dumb and ravenous strife
No Power will justify and none avert?
And in the deep—’tis well we see not there!
{129} CHARLES WARREN STODDARD
O Muse! within thy western hall,
To mellow chord and crystal string,
At many harps thy chosen sing:
His was the gentlest soul of all.
He sang not as the leaping faun
By voiceless rivers cool and clear,
Nor yet as chants the visioned seer
When darkness trembles with the dawn.
A milder music held his lyre—
A wistful strain, all human-sweet,
Between the ashes at our feet
And stars that pass in alien fire.{130} ”

“ Who maketh Altair and Rigel the captains of His host; Who leaneth His spear upon Sirius ere the trumpets call;
44. Who holdeth Vega His armor-bearer, and hangeth his buckler upon Aldebaran;
45. Who hath convoked their chariots against the lamps of Evil, and their swords against the abyss.
46. Who healeth the day with night, and thy heart’s wound with the hands of little children;
47. Even they that seek the breast in darkness, hushing the voices that were aforetime.
48. The wind cometh, the dust is troubled for a season, but hath rest when the wind departeth. ”

“ Thou abidest in My sight as the smoke of a sacrifice, or as the grey moth in the conspection of the stars.
15. What hast thou if thou hast not Me? Thou takest to thee strange wine, and the kiss of the asp that it comfort thee.{137}
16. Awake, let it be always day with thee! Know that I am the Lord,
17. Who ordaineth His truth as the mountains, and the dust as stars that conceive;
18. Who teacheth fear with an arrow, and bitter wisdom to thy young men of war;
19. Who boundeth pain by peace, and setteth a term unto love ”

“ Who yoketh stars to His harrow, and the whirlwind to drag his plough on great waters.{138}
25. Take counsel of Me; behold what shapes I have set as My servants.
26. The sun is a coal of My hearth, the moon an ember that I have quenched;
27. Shall not I make her a desolation, and a rock where devils worship?
28. Shall not My gulfs conceive, and Mine angels whet their scythes against the day of My reaping?
29. Be thou abased, for they are yet unborn that shall lay thee out; the worm is unhatched that shall consume thee.
30. Wilt thou hold forth to Me thy heart in thy hand ”

“ Last night the granite headland loomed
A Titan on the night,
About whose knees the billows boomed,
Enormous, baffled, white.
And now to morning’s throne of gold
Murmurs the chastened sea:
Its thunder and its whispers hold
The selfsame mystery.
{81} A CHARACTER
Blunt as a child, since child he was at heart,
And sun-sincere, my friend to many seemed
Dull, rude, aggressive, tactless. Add to all
His bulk and hairiness and stormy laugh,
And one can find them some excuse for that. ”

“ Duandon woke below the evening star,
And saw the foam’s incessant scimetar
Leap from the billow’s sheath, and heard the cry{19}
Of winds unleashed upon the western sky;
Forlorn beyond the darkling waters lay
The sullen embers of the pyre of Day—
Dull, ere obscuring night should make the sea
One with the reaches of infinity ”

“ To what end dost thou search Me, seeing that My wisdom is not as thine?
3. Shalt thou question My ways, or have dreams concerning My justice? Am not I the Lord?
4. Who hath strange laughter, Whose judgments are not as those of the elders ”

“ Round which the sullen huckster trod, bore trace
Of dogs’ defilement—transitory moil
That expiating rains would soon assoil;
But oh, the sunlight on that tranquil face!
What to the Titan were the mindless deed,
Mire-born, and swiftly with the mire made one?
No more than could the marble couldst thou heed
The mongrel, and the hate of souls uncouth—
Thou eagle who hast gazed upon the sun
And canst endure the light which is the truth!
{127} TO HALL B. RAND
Happy the man whose age attains
Repute and rank among the best! ”

“ But we set
Our hooded prows to sea, and, tempest-wet,
Beat up the coast forlorn.{57}
And no man scorned our tale, for well they knew
Had mystery befallen: in our eyes
Were alien terrors and unknown surmise.
Men saw the tale was true.
And no man seeks a refuge on that shore,
Tho tempests gather in impelling skies;
Unseen, unsolved, unhazarded it lies,
Forsaken evermore.
For on those sands immaculate and lone
Perchance They list the sea’s immeasured lyre,
When sunset casts an evanescent fire
Thro billows thunder-sown.
{58} BENEATH THE REDWOODS
O trees! ”

“ Behold! blood shall be in their courts for wine, and the moaning of their concubines for the voice of the viol.
34. I shall break their temples as a shard; their high pillars shall be snapt as a bow-string.
35. My tempests shall neigh in the walled cities; My grass shall lift up her sword against them;
36. The toad shall be judge there; the jackal shall collect the tax;
37. The owl shall feed her young on their altars; the dung of lions shall be thereon for a testimony.
38. Wert thou upon the flint when I confirmed it, or upon the granite when I laid its sheets? ”

“ Is Goodness even as Evil? Shall she find
Her wages also death? Wilt thou deride
Our ancient search for justice in thy ways?{113}
With bitter viands evermore appease
Our hunger and our thirst for righteousness? ”

“ Not even of memory.
{64} AN ALTAR OF THE WEST
(Point Lobos, the southern boundary of Carmel Bay.)
Beauty, what dost thou here?
Why hauntest thou this empery of pain
Where men in vain
Long for another sphere?
Art not an exile shy,
A dreamer ’mid the swords,
Upon this iron world where men defy
Time and its hidden lords? ”

“ When in those gardens of the sea
The lilies of the moon should gleam.
{90} THE SIBYL OF DREAMS
The rose she gathers is invisible,
But ah! its fragrance on the visioned air—
The scent of Paphian flowers warm and fair ”

“ Abides a moment in the twilight’s grace.
{62} MORNING TWILIGHT
An early thrush acclaims the light—
The wide, low-billowing day
O’er dews and grasses chill with night
Upcasts its foam of grey.
Now end the darkness and its dreams. ”

“ And dwelt in shame. Doubtless she long is dead.”
And Nila gazed upon the land and sky,
Woven for man’s illusion, and beheld
The scarlet petals fallen from their stem.
The cloud had gone; the wind was fled away.
And Nila turned him from the veils of Time,
And bowed his head, and murmured: “God is just.”
{102} THE FLEET
Stand fast! ”

“ Who maketh the king in his secret place and him{136} that the vultures did devour to sleep the same sleep;
9. Who confoundeth the sea, but leadeth the ant to her desire.
10. Have not I sharpened the beak of the kite against the day of thy hope; the raven’s beak against the eyes of thy young men? ”