WHITE MAGIC
by: George Sterling (1869-1926)
- EEP ye her
brow with starshine crost
- And bind with ghostly light her hair,
- O powers benign, lest I accost
- Song's peaceless angel unaware!
-
- One eve her whisper came to earth,
- As eastward woke a thorny star,
- To tell me of her kingdom's worth
- And what her liberations are:
-
- She hath the Edens in her gift
- And songs of sovereignties unborn;
- In realms agone her turrets lift,
- Wrought from the purples of the morn.
-
- Where swings to foam the dusky sea,
- She waits with sapphires in her hand
- Whose light shall make thy spirit be
- Lost in a still, enchanted land.
-
- Musing, she hears the subtle tunes
- From chords where faery fingers stray--
- A rain of pearl from crumbling moons
- Less clear and delicate than they.
-
- The strain we lost and could not find
- Think we her haunted heart forgets?
- She weaves it with a troubled wind
- And twilight music that regrets.
-
- Often she stands, unseen, aloof,
- To watch beside an ocean's brink
- The gorgeous, evanescent woof
- Cast from the loom of suns that sink.
-
- Often, in eyries of the West,
- She waits a lover from afar--
- Frailties of blossom on her breast
- And o'er her brow the evening star.
-
- She stands to greet him unaware,
- Who cannot find her if he seek:
- A sigh, a scent of heavenly hair--
- And oh, her breath is on his cheek!
"White Magic" is reprinted
from The House of Orchids and Other Poems. George Sterling.
San Francisco: A. M. Robertson, 1911. |
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POEMS BY GEORGE STERLING |
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