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BY GEORGE STERLING 
 
 The Testimony of the Suns and Other 
 
 Poems. Crown 8to. Cloth i^i-^S 
 
 A Wine of Wizardry and Other 
 
 Poems. Croiun %Y0. Cloth 1.25 
 
 The House of Orchids and Other 
 
 Poems. Croivn%yQ. Cloth ^-^-S 
 
 Beyond the Breakers and Other 
 
 Poems. Croivn %\o. Cloth ^-"^S 
 
 Yosemite. Crotvn 8vo. Full Paper 
 
 Boards, Illustrated .75 
 
 Ode on the Opening of the Panama- 
 Pacific International Exposition. 
 Limited edition on hand-made 
 paper and the type distributed. 
 Small 4.to. Full Hand-Made Paper 
 oi'er Boards 1.75 
 
 A. M. ROBERTSON 
 San Francisco 
 
Fro/ii ToiCDiitc Villi i 
 
Y O S E M I T E 
 
 <^n Ode 
 
 BY 
 
 George Sterling / 
 
 WITH 
 
 <ui Cover in Color zAfter the 'Painting by 
 H.J. Breuer 
 
 AND 
 
 Illustrations <iAfter Photographs by 
 
 W. E. Da SSON VI L L E y 
 
 ^ 
 
 San Francisco 
 A.M. ROBERTSON 
 
 MCMXVI 
 
 c^^ 
 
COPYRIGHT, I9I5, BY 
 
 A. M. Robertson / 
 
 
 5 VI 
 
 CO 
 
 \^ 
 
 PRINTED BY TAYLOR W TAYLOR, SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 ©CI.A414593^ 
 
 NOV 12 1915 
 
 t- 
 
TO UNITED STATES SENATOR 
 JAMES DUVAL PHELAN 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 r f f 
 
 After the painting by H. J. Breuer: 
 YosEMiTE On the cover 
 
 After photographs by W. E. Dassonville : 
 From Yosemite Falls Frontispiece 
 
 The Yosemite Falls Opposite page 2 
 
 The Bridal Veil Falls 6 
 
 Twilight lo 
 
 Morning — the Half-Dome 15 
 
YOS E M I T E 
 
Y O S E M I T E 
 
 BEAUTY, whose face and mystery we seek, 
 Forever longing and forever foiled, — 
 Whose praise the voices of our art would speak, 
 And in whose faith all art and love have toiled. 
 Be gracious, where in vain, 
 Here at thy noblest fane, 
 Where silent summits lift, 
 I heap thine altar-stone with humble flow'rs. 
 The mute bestowal of my happier hours — 
 
 The hours that held thy pain. 
 The heart-ache of thy presence and its stress. 
 Be gracious to the giver and the gift, 
 
 And be thy ruth 
 Some aspect of thine inner loveliness 
 
 Or instant blaze 
 Of sunlight on the marbles of thy truth. 
 Where I may stand and gaze 
 
Y O S E M I T E 
 
 Ere following night confess 
 How art betrays us, even in its youth, 
 And of thy sudden vision and its bliss 
 We give but broken news and songs amiss. 
 
 The primal gleam 
 Of thy far wings on Time's remoter skies 
 
 Drew first man's eyes 
 To that high star which is the light of Dream. 
 
 Dimly he saw 
 Thy splendor past the range of brutish law, 
 
 And slowly found the trace 
 
 And latency of thee 
 In fire and morning and the lily's cup, — 
 In quiet waters and the lifted sea, — 
 
 In his beloved's face. 
 With eyes like those of the awakened fawn. 
 So grew his adoration, dawn and dawn. 
 Sunset and sunset slowly storing up 
 
 Their unforgotten flame 
 And nacre in his soul's deep dwelling-place. 
 Till at the last he named thee with thy name. 
 » 
 
 Thou, too, art bond to Change, 
 And we, the far descendants of the brute, 
 
 [ 2 ] 
 
*;f^^ 
 
 T^he ToscDiitc VliIIs 
 
Y O S E M I T E 
 
 Find ever in thy realm the new and strange, 
 Our vision of thee deepening with the years, 
 And with our hearts that sorrow and transmute. 
 By duty and the alchemy of tears. 
 
 By all our nobler fears, 
 We find thy graces for a time withheld — 
 Honor and gentleness and faith in man, 
 And self to self's own sacrifice impelled. 
 And Love whose gaze grows upward, star by star. 
 And what the farther glories of thy Plan 
 We know not, thou whose wings go forth so far ! 
 
 But though thou be 
 The daughter and the phantom of man's soul. 
 
 Our hearts acknowledge thee. 
 And thy last flight shall be the human goal. 
 
 II 
 
 Not on Romance's hills. 
 Forsaken by the lover and the lute. 
 
 Nor pure Illyrian rills, 
 Nor western islands sung by lips long mute. 
 Is thy last secrecy and utmost throne. 
 
 Whose morning snows thou hast. 
 Though one should seek thy temple, zone by zone. 
 In this far valley would he kneel at last. 
 
 [ 3 ] 
 
^ YOSEMITE 1 ^ 
 
 The world-wide questing done. 
 
 Here shall the seeker scan 
 The mighty chancel of thy holy place, 
 
 Not as the fanes of man, 
 Whose marble is a mist before Time's sun, — 
 
 Whose term the years allot, — 
 
 Whose ruins man shall trace, 
 But as a House to be when Time is not. 
 
 O terrible, abiding and august, 
 
 The walls wherefrom thine eagles have their path ! 
 
 Bastions sublime, cliffs inaccessible 
 
 To giants in their wrath! 
 O summits lifted unto endless Good ! 
 Heights that the hands of Law shall not annul 
 When all the pyramids are trodden dust ! 
 Well were it that the fabled seraph stood 
 With quenchless sword before the shielded portal. 
 Crying, "Bare ye your heads and transient feet, 
 For ye are face to face with the Immortal, 
 The beauty which to gaze on is to live ! " 
 Lol here sublimity and beauty meet. 
 Meet in a final covenant and give 
 Unto man's heart and soul for everlasting 
 The sum and measure of their deathless grace, — 
 
 [ 4 ] 
 
YOSEMITE 
 
 The guerdon of their good, 
 A promise and a portent, a forecasting 
 Of those far halls that yet shall house the race, 
 When self and night have died in Brotherhood. 
 
 O domes and towers and stupendous walls I 
 O voices of auroral waterfalls ! 
 Sierran thunderheads of cloud or stone 
 That share the heavens as a realm o'erthrown ! 
 How high your ancestry in Nature's art ! 
 Here once the unfathomable granite lay 
 
 Ungraven to the day 
 And burdened with deep rivers of the ice. 
 But age by age slow billows rent apart 
 The cold foundations and the chiselled flanks, 
 
 Till pinnacle and tower 
 
 Told from their westward ranks 
 Where sank the abysmal quarries of the Power. 
 
 O patient centuries 
 
 That with so vast device 
 
 Frame strongholds such as these ! 
 O battlements arisen to the sky, 
 Whence gods might chant to the departing sun 
 
 Hymns of oblivion, 
 Or iron litanies of worlds that die ! 
 
 [ 5 ] 
 
Y O S E M I T E ^ 
 
 III 
 
 Here skyward gazing from the Valley's floor 
 One sees the imperishable ramparts soar 
 
 To base the doming blue ; 
 Yet here the noon takes not the vestal dew 
 In emerald gardens walled with majesty 
 And groves that were when Tyre was tyrannous — 
 
 A dusk from sorrow free, 
 A haunt of fauns where care seems not to be 
 
 Nor any need of words. 
 O refuge green and home unperilous 
 In meadows ringed about with happy birds, 
 Where butterflies are given all their will, — 
 
 Where ferny fronds are curled, 
 Shadowed by crags whose fall would shake the world 
 
 O whisperings that stir, 
 In slender crests of the aeolian fir. 
 From winds that mourn in music, and are still ! 
 Recesses where the feet of Time are slow, 
 Dwelt in by flowers whose name we would not know J 
 
 * 
 But voices come that urge us from your peace, 
 Where the inviolable waterfall 
 
 Ere winter give it cease. 
 Shakes all day long a thunder from its wall, 
 
 [ 6 ] 
 
'The Bridal Veil Falls 
 
^ 
 
 Y O S E M I T E 
 
 Or in the darkness, like a Titan's ghost, 
 Moans as the sea on some tormented coast. 
 
 Hark then its call ! 
 To that high music give your souls in keeping! 
 Ascend at dawn to that uplifted place 
 Whence the doomed torrent, from its eyrie leaping, 
 Takes virgin vesture and immortal grace. 
 
 Beauty surpassing all ! 
 Splendor of whiteness, foam of pearls that crash 
 To rainbow-mist on barriers immense ! 
 Iris and veils of amethyst that lash 
 The eternal granite in magnificence I 
 Can eyes behold you save with rapture wet, 
 Or turn them from your glory and forget? 
 
 O falling rivers, beautful in doom! 
 
 Your lofty raiments sway 
 As mountain-winds fling wider to the day 
 The sounding fabric of a stony loom. 
 Walls that endure, waters that pass away ! 
 Peaks that are silent, streams that sunward call 
 From thundrous caldrons moulded not by hands ! 
 Waters that flow to other men and lands. 
 Till, ocean clouds, ye take the heavens again. 
 And the Sierran rain 
 
 [ 7 ] 
 
Y O S E M I T E 
 
 Quivers once more upon the mountain wall ! 
 Ye come and pass and come again — ah I so 
 
 Do mortals come and go? 
 And is the passing and returning all"? 
 
 O secret path of man I 
 O butterfly above the waterfall I 
 O lizard peering from El Capitan ! 
 Ashes of sunset, altar-fires of morn, 
 Seasons of doom, and surge of wings reborn ! 
 
 IV 
 
 Beauty on Heaven's nectar and Earth's bread 
 
 Miraculously feeds. 
 
 Her elder pathway leads 
 
 To that acceptant spot | 
 
 Where scorn of any simple thing is not, 
 And gods on dust and man on stars have fed. 
 Yet needs she heights to test her pinions' pow'r, 
 Ascendant from the glow-worm and the flow'r ! 
 
 To heavens cloud-empearled, — | 
 
 To thrones of azure air ' 
 
 And snows from which the morning greets the world 
 Look down, and see the grasses in her care ; 
 Then from this granite and tremendous dome 
 Gaze eastward to the mountains in their might. 
 
 [ 8 ] 
 
Y O S E M I T E 
 
 Far down the torrents foam ; 
 
 Far up the eagles float ; 
 Far off the enormous ramparts wait the night, 
 Unsentineled, untroubled and remote. 
 Southward to where the desert waits in death, 
 And north to lonely Shasta's stormy breath, 
 The fortresses of the eternal run, 
 Unaltered by the lightnings and the sun. 
 Thence the young rivers hasten to the deep, 
 
 And there the advancing day 
 Gathers its legions for their seaward sweep. 
 Thence go the winds like angels forth to sla)% 
 And there all night the avalanches sleep. 
 
 ♦ 
 Now lies the noon upon those fields of stone 
 And forests where the wind seems glad to cease. 
 Below, the snowy cataract alone. 
 
 Though here unheard, is loud. 
 
 Above, a single cloud 
 Rears on the turquoise cavern of the sky 
 Its towering pearl and alabaster throne. 
 The vast, ineffable Sierran peace 
 
 Holds not a sigh. 
 Where the stilled soul accepts her large release 
 From memories that sorrow ere they die. 
 
 [ 9 ] 
 
€ 
 
 Y O S E M I T E 
 
 Ah I human heart, that hast in store such tears ! 
 
 Put by thy grief beside these lucid fountains I 
 
 Forget the sadder voices of thy years ! 
 
 Thy refuge is the everlasting mountains, 
 
 Thy respite the compassion of their night, 
 
 And crystal voices lifted to thine ears 
 
 From those clear springs of loveliness and light. 
 
 Far off, the cities roar ; 
 Far down, the world awaits thee, and its pain : 
 Have rest, ere ancient burdens be once more. 
 And silence, ere the tumult wake again I 
 
 The swirling river murmurs to the fir 
 
 And balsamed shadows stir; 
 
 Far up the afternoon 
 Floats the frail silver of the day-moon's dome. 
 
 On summits glacier-hewn 
 The reawakened winds begin to roam 
 
 Sweet with the forest's myrrh, 
 And casting on the world an undertone 
 
 So deeper than their own ! 
 Follow, beneath the granite's rugged crown — 
 O boiling gorges and victorious roar 
 Of lion-throated torrents pouring down 
 In sounding onset to the valley-floor I 
 
 [lo] 
 

Y O S E M I T E 
 
 White bridals of the water and the air, 
 As the rent crystal sweeps to choral foam ! 
 
 Oh I whiter than the star 
 
 With no horizon-home, 
 That sets not, though the truceless morning come ! 
 
 And fairer still than these 
 
 Or surf of western seas. 
 Thy rainbow, like an angel's scimitar, 
 Slaying with beauty till the soul is dumb 
 For lack of that high speech the seraphs know I 
 By what acclaim shall man acknowledge this. 
 And with what songs give raiment to his bliss? 
 
 O floods and hues that flow ! 
 O chords and voices of the deathless dead. 
 And visioned music of their lyric rite. 
 When Beauty's altar shone with wilder light. 
 And singing lips on richer milk were fed ! 
 
 V 
 
 The hermit thrush has fluted from his tree, 
 Unanswered in the quietude. The sun 
 Goes forth on scarlet thresholds to the sea. 
 The many shadows gather unto one, 
 Paving the Valley in solemnity. 
 The darkness does not fall. 
 
 [11] 
 
Y O S E M I T E 
 
 :^ 
 
 But rising slow, the tidal shadow drowns, 
 One after one, the ledges and the crowns, 
 The graven cliffs, the ramparts and the spires. 
 The world's arisen shade hath buried all, 
 Save where, to us, the last of day's far fires, 
 
 Ere sunset flee. 
 High on the headland of the South Dome lies. 
 O giant bulk I O monarch of our skies ! 
 Soaring in rose from twilight's purple sea I 
 Thine afterglow, the memory of day, 
 
 Can but a little stay; 
 But in our souls the glory may not cease. 
 
 One with ethereal things — 
 The torrent's song, the cedar's whisperings. 
 
 The dawn's divine increase. 
 The loneliness and mystery and peace 
 Of evening mountains watched from far away. 
 
 On snows and pinnacle and river lies 
 The vast Sierran night, augustly dumb. 
 Keep vigil, ere the faithful morning come 
 
 Across Nevada's skies. 
 Below the moonless heavens deeply starred, 
 The forests sleep, unhaunted by the wind; 
 
 The lone, Titanic peaks 
 
 [12] 
 
Y O S E M I T E 
 
 Between the stars and forest stand at guard. 
 What is it that the yearning planet seeks — 
 This homeless world that wanders lost and blind? 
 She finds not any solace in the night 
 
 Nor haven for her flight : 
 Let us forget the cold abyss, and turn 
 
 To where man's hearthstones bum . . . 
 
 Far eastward breaks the light 
 On cities rising to their endless toil, 
 
 On multitudes whose eyes 
 The Vision flies — 
 Serfs to the waiting engines and the soil. 
 And little children to the untimely task 
 Stumble at dawn, and know their masters sleep. 
 
 O blind and bartered poor! 
 Must these things be forever, though we ask 
 Why ye to tawdry pleasures and false arts 
 
 Must turn your cheated hearts'? 
 To these, and less. 
 Barred from our earth's exalting loveliness. 
 For alway must the monstrous Scheme endure 
 That keeps the many to their labor bound — 
 Banished from these clean heights and gracious ground? 
 Shall not the atoning season come at last 
 When any son of earth may lift his face 
 
 [13] 
 
Y O S E M I T E 
 
 To battlements of this transcendent place — 
 Freed from the hateful dungeons of the Past? 
 
 O hungered mouths unfed 
 From that immortal urn whose holy flood 
 
 Is Beauty's holier blood ! 
 O sacrament of her terrestrial bread ! 
 O Valley waiting through the wistful years, 
 
 The sure though distant tread 
 Of those young armies of the Comrade State ! 
 
 Fair lands reconsecrate, 
 And toils that yet shall end in happy tears ! 
 
 Under the midnight's arch, 
 Slowly those ranks are forming for the march. 
 Ere the Night falter and the legions are 
 Led on and upward by their morning star. 
 
 The morning star ! Now eastward on the night 
 
 Her pure, unstirring light 
 Glows like the matin taper of a nun. 
 Arcturus sets. The Pleiades, upborne 
 
 On the wide surf of morn, 
 Join shuddering the rout of stars begun 
 By those red swords made vanguard to the sun. 
 The Valley lies below us like a cup. 
 Filled with the wine of Twilight and her dream. 
 
 [14] 
 
Miirii/iui — I he HliI l-Diii/ic 
 
■^ Y O S E M I T E 
 
 Nevada flames. The mountain walls send up 
 Their eagles on the morning, ere the gleam 
 Of the great day-star fall on wood and stream 
 
 From south to north 
 What golden wings, what argent feet go forth 
 
 On heaven and radiant snows ! 
 
 What archangel ic flights 
 Of seraphim from everlasting heights, — 
 From citadels colossal, where the song 
 
 Of giant winds is strong, 
 And, washed in timeless fire, the granite glows 
 With silver and unutterable rose I 
 
 O vaster Dawn, ascendant and sublime, 
 
 That past the peaks of Time 
 
 And midnight stars' array. 
 Dost bear the magnitude of skies to be, 
 
 What hopes go forth to thee ! 
 
 O glad, unrisen Day! 
 The soul, an eagle from its eyrie yearning. 
 Goes up against the splendor and the burning — 
 Goes up, and sees afar the world made free ! 
 
 O liberty to come ! 
 What trumpets shall announce thee on what glooms? 
 What lips now dumb 
 
 [15] 
 
Y O S E M I T E 
 
 Shall sing thine ancient victories and dooms, 
 
 And in what halls 
 Shall man set up an altar to thy star*? 
 
 Yea ! though the time be far, 
 Shall not thy song be lifted to these walls 
 And on these peaks shall not thy banners shine? 
 
 O Dawn divine I 
 On eastern skies I see thy chariots hurled. 
 
 And on the reeling night 
 
 The legions of thy light, 
 With morning ! morning ! morning ! on the world ! 
 
 THE END 
 
 [16] 
 
 W39 
 
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