Lo! the abyss wherein great Satan's wings Might gender tempests, and his dragons' breath Fume up in pestilence. Beneath the sun Or starry outposts on terrestrial things, Is no such testimony unto Death Nor altars builded to Oblivion.
George Sterling
KINDRED
Musing, between the sunset and the dark, As Twilight in unhesitating hands Bore from the faint horizon's underlands, Silvern and chill, the moon's phantasmal ark, I heard the sea, and far away could mark Where that unalterable waste expands In sevenfold sapphire from the mournful sands, And saw beyond the deep a vibrant spark.
There sank the sun Arcturus, and I thought: Star, by an ocean on a world of thine, May not a being, born like me to die, Confront a little the eternal Naught And watch our isolated sun decline— Sad for his evanescence, even as I?
George Sterling
REMEMBERED LIGHT
The years are a falling of snow, Slow, but without cessation, On hills and mountains and flowers and worlds that were; But snow and the crawling night in which it fell May be washed away in one swifter hour of flame. Thus it was that some slant of sunset In the chasms of piled cloud— Transient mountains that made a new horizon, Uplifting the west to fantastic pinnacles— Smote warm in a buried realm of the spirit, Till the snows of forgetfulness were gone.