George Sterling Poems

Sargon is dust, Semiramis a clod!
   In crypts profaned the moon at midnight peers;
   The owl upon the Sphinx hoots in her ears,
And scant and sear the desert grasses nod
...

How many flowers are gently met
Within my garden fair!
The daffodil, the violet,
And lilies dear are there.
...

Deny me not forever, for in thee
All beauty seems regathered and reborn
Thou art that rose whose garden is the morn,
...

Once as a boy I dreamed
Where wider waters gleamed
Of ships below
The slowly gathering western stars,
...

All this I dreamt. Shall any deign to hear
The Dreamer? But the night was moonless, I,
Too weary for the vigil, slept at last,
...

Herewith is Beauty fashioned? Canst thou deem
Her evanescent roses bourgeon save
...

Can there be one whose blood from England finds
Nurture and source, who sees her war to-day
And yearns not for the liberative fray?
...

I had a dream of some great house of stone,
Not dark, but open to the northern ray.
Beneath a cold and somber sky it lay,
...

Full-starred, seraphic Night arose,
Lifting the Pleiades' dim lyre
Above that solitude where glows
Rose-red Aldebaran's fire.
...

Red, in what maze of indecisive war,
Sought I thy dooming beauty in the past?
For as a light from firmaments o'ercast,
...