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!

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