George Sterling Poems

I

Beauty, whose face and mystery we seek,
Forever longing and forever foiled,—
...

Poets of England, where are you to-day?
If I, removed by nigh three hundred years
From English soil, share thus your hopes and fears,
...

Now with a sigh November comes to the brooding land.
Yellowing now toward winter the willows of Carmel stand.
...

Thou settest splendors in my sight, O Lord!
It seems as though a deep-hued sunset falls
Forever on these Cyclopean walls,—
...

How droops the troubled year
And now her tiny sunset stains the leaf.
A holy fear,
A rapt, elusive grief,
...

Loose now thy flaming pinions on the West,
Vega, thou heavenly lamp of my desire!
Now burns the sun upon its crimson pyre,
...

So airy sweet the fragile song,
I deemed his visions true,
And roamed Edenic vales along,
Lit by celestial dew.
...

When life is fully ripened are not we
What we remember, as our hearts enfold
The beauty closed within like hoarded gold—
...

Said the faun to the will-o'-the-wisp:
'You are fugitive, far!'
Said the will-o'-the-wisp to the faun:
'But more near than the star.'
...

Spindrift and bilge and the world turns over!
What is the dross and what the gold?
The snake and the lark ha' nests in the clover,
...