EX UBKGMVERSIiYOF CALIFORNIA 
 
 JOHN HENRY NASH LIBRARY 
 
 <> SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 PRESENTED TO THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 ROBERT GORDON SPROUL, PRESIDENT. 
 
 MR.ANDMRS.MILTON S.RAV 
 
 CECILY, VIRGINIA AND ROSALYN RAY 
 
 AND THE 
 
 RAY OIL BURNER COMPANY 
 
THIRTY'HVE J SONNETS BY 
 
 GEORGE ^ STERLING 
 
 PUBLISH JED BY 
 
 THE Jj? BOOK 
 
 CL UB 
 
 O|F 
 
 CALIFlloRNIA 
 
Copyright, 1917, by George Sterling 
 
IN EXTREMIS 
 
 TILL DAWN THE WINDS' IN. 
 SUPERABLE THRONG 
 PASSED OVER LIKE ARCH- 
 ANGELS IN THEIR MIGHT' 
 WITH ROAR OF CHARIOTS 
 FROM THEIR STORMY 
 HEIGHT' 
 
 AND BROKEN THUNDER OF 
 MYSTERIOUS SONG^ 
 BY MARINER OR SENTRY 
 HEARD ALONG 
 THE STAR'USURPING BAT' 
 TLEMENTS OF NIGHT^. 
 AND WAFTURE OF IM' 
 MEASURABLE FLIGHT' 
 AND HIGH-BLOWN TRUM' 
 PETS MUTINOUS 6? STRONG 
 
Till louder on the dreadful dark I heard 
 The shrieking of the tempest'tortured tree, 
 And deeper on immensity the call 
 And tumult of the empire'forging sea; 
 But near the eternal Peace I lay, nor stirred, 
 Knowing the happy dead hear not at all. 
 
ROMANCE 
 
 Thou passest, and we know thee not, Romance! 
 Thy gase is backward, and thy heart is fed 
 With murmurs and with music of the dead. 
 Alas, our battle! for the rays that glance 
 On thy dethroning sword and haughty lance 
 Are of forgotten suns and stars long fled; 
 Thou weavest phantom roses for thy head, 
 And ghostly queens in thy dominion dance. 
 
 Would we might follow thy returning wings, 
 And in thy farthest haven beach our prow 
 Thy dragons conquered and thine oceans crossed 
 And find thee standing on the dust of kings, 
 A lion at thy side, and on thy brow 
 The light of sunsets wonderful and lost! 
 
A MOOD 
 
 I am grown weary of permitted things 
 And weary of the care^emburdened age 
 Of any dusty lore of priest and sage 
 To which no memory of Arcadia clings; 
 For subtly in my blood at evening sings 
 A madness of the faun a choric rage 
 That makes all earth and sky seem but a cage 
 In which the spirit pines with cheated wings. 
 
 Rather by dusk for Lilith would I wait 
 And for a moment's rapture welcome death, 
 Knowing that I had baffled Time and Fate, 
 And feeling on my lips, that died with day 
 As sense and soul were gathered to a breath, 
 The immortal, deadly lips that kissing slay. 
 
MEMORY 
 
 She stands beside the ocean of the Past, 
 A diver. Pearls and hydras can she bring, 
 Shells for the child and crystals for the king. 
 Prone on her reefs the sea^assaying mast 
 And keels that dared the hurricane are cast 
 Trophies of tides invincible that swing 
 Around the islands where the sirens sing, 
 The magic of whose song is hers at last. 
 
 Some shadow of the glory she restores, 
 
 Tho wave and wind devour the Ships of Dream; 
 
 For many mark her ere the fall of night, 
 
 When the surf's sound is mighty on her shores, 
 
 Singing, as wildly on her bosom gleam 
 
 The sea'dews, and the rubies of the light. 
 
THE BLACK VULTURE 
 
 Aloof upon the day's unmeasured dome, 
 He holds unshared the silence of the sky. 
 Far down his bleak, relentless eyes descry 
 The eagle's empire and the falcon's home 
 Far down, the galleons of sunset roam; 
 His hazards on the sea of morning lie; 
 Serene, he hears the broken tempest sigh 
 Where cold sierras gleam like scattered foam. 
 
 And least of all he holds the human swarm 
 Unwitting now that envious men prepare 
 To make their dream and its fulfilment one, 
 When, poised above the caldrons of the storm, 
 Their hearts, contemptuous of death, shall dare 
 His roads between the thunder and the sun. 
 
 8 
 
THE MUSE OF THE INCOMMUNICABLE 
 
 An echo often have our singers caught, 
 And they that bend above the saddened strings; 
 One hue of all the hundred on her wings 
 Our painters render, and our men of thought 
 In realms mysterious her face have sought 
 And glimpsed its marvel in elusive things. 
 Her fragrance gathers and her shadow clings 
 To all the loveliness that man hath wrought. 
 
 The wind of lonely places is her wine. 
 Still she eludes us, hidden, husht and fleet, 
 A star withdrawn, a music in the gloom. 
 Beauty and death her speechless lips assign, 
 Where silence is, and where the surf-loud feet 
 Of armies wander on the sands of doom. 
 
AT THE GRAND CANON 
 
 Thou settest splendors in my sight, O Lord! 
 It seems as tho a deep'hued sunset falls 
 Forever on these Cyclopean walls, 
 These battlements where Titan hosts have warred, 
 And hewn the world with devastating sword, 
 And shook with trumpets the eternal halls 
 Where seraphim lay hid by bloody palls 
 And only Hell and Silence were adored. 
 
 Lo! the abyss wherein great Satan's wings 
 Might gender tempests, and his dragons 1 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. 
 
 10 
 
SONNETS ON OBLIVION 
 
 Oblivion 
 
 The Dust Dethroned 
 The Night of Gods 
 
OBLIVION 
 
 Her eyes have seen the monoliths of kings 
 Upcast like foam of the effacing tide; 
 She hath beheld the desert stars deride 
 The monuments of Power's imaginings; 
 About their base the wind Assyrian flings 
 The dust that throned the satrap in his pride; 
 Cambyses and the Memphian pomps abide 
 As in the flame the moth's presumptuous wings. 
 
 There gleams no glory that her hand shall spare, 
 Nor any sun whose rays shall cross her night, 
 Whose realm enfolds man's empire and its end. 
 No armor of renown her sword shall dare, 
 No council of the gods withstand her might: 
 Stricken at last Time's lonely Titans bend. 
 
THE DUST DETHRONED 
 
 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 
 Where once the armies of Assyria trod, 
 With younger sunlight splendid on the spears; 
 The lichens cling the closer with the years, 
 And seal the eyelids of the weary god. 
 
 Where high the tombs of royal Egypt heave, 
 The vulture shadows with arrested wings 
 The indecipherable boasts of kings, 
 As Arab children hear their mother's cry 
 And leave in mockery their toy they leave 
 The skull of Pharaoh staring at the sky. 
 
THE NIGHT OF GODS 
 
 Their mouths have drunken the eternal wine- 
 The draught that Baal in oblivion sips. 
 Unseen about their courts the adder slips, 
 Unheard the sucklings of the leopard whine; 
 The toad has found a resting-place divine 
 And bloats in stupor between Ammons lips. 
 
 Carthage and the unreturning ships, 
 The fallen pinnacle, the shifting Sign! 
 
 Lo! when I hear from voiceless court and fane 
 
 Time's adoration of Eternity 
 
 The cry of kingdoms past and gods undone 
 
 1 stand as one whose feet at noontide gain 
 A lonely shore; who feels his soul set free, 
 And hears the blind sea chanting to the sun. 
 
SONNETS ON SLEEP 
 
 I - II / III 
 
I 
 
 Upon the skies of slumber dreams have flight, 
 And one from gentlest dreams may wake to weep. 
 The dark has moons to sway its utmost deep, 
 And stars that touch the sleeper from their height. 
 Ere long, tho mute and liberative Night 
 Thy soul and sorrow in her poppy steep, 
 Her flowers the sickle of the dawn shall reap, 
 In melancholy meadows of the light. 
 
 In vain are Lethe's dews upon the brow, 
 
 Except one find them on its farther shore; 
 
 And he alone has enviable rest 
 
 Who sought for peace through many tears, and now 
 
 Whose answered heart a rose is richer for, 
 
 In some old graveyard where the robins nest. 
 
II 
 
 Life holds a different pact with every man, 
 Tho to one sea her many streams descend. 
 To some she stands a foe, to some a friend, 
 Devising each her benison or ban; 
 And one is saint, and one is courtesan; 
 One labors, one is idle to the end. 
 Of all her children none shall comprehend 
 Whether she strive in madness or with plan. 
 
 But Death has one condition for us all, 
 And he that in the pyramid's deep core 
 Lies with the graven adamant for pall, 
 In no profounder pit of silence sleeps 
 Than he who has his grave by some low shore 
 To which the thunder-bosomed ocean sweeps. 
 
HI 
 
 Death has the final answer to our cry, 
 And past our portals of unrest awaits 
 Responsive to our question of the Fates; 
 And he who would attain that deep reply 
 Must seal his ears to other sounds, and die. 
 What wonder, if before the midnight gates 
 The searcher of the riddle hesitates, 
 Uncertain what those ashen lips deny? 
 
 What if the hearer with the pleader cease, 
 And thus the timeless answer come unheard? 
 So he that sought for truth should find it peace, 
 In those long silences where none could hark 
 The mighty, indecipherable Word 
 That fell unfathomed on the eternal dark. 
 
THE THIRST OF SATAN 
 
 In dream I saw the starry disarray 
 (That battle-dust of matter's endless war) 
 Astir with some huge passing, and afar 
 Beheld the troubled constellations sway 
 In winds of insurrection and dismay, 
 Till, from that magnitude whose ages are 
 But moments in the cycle of the star, 
 There swept a Shadow on our ghost of day 
 
 A Shape that clutched the deviating earth 
 
 And checked its headlong flight and held it fast, 
 
 ^^^f 
 
 Draining the bitter oceans one by one. 
 Then, to the laughter of infernal mirth, 
 The ruined chalice droned athwart the Vast, 
 Hurled in the face of the offended sun. 
 
RESPITE 
 
 Noon has her drowsy kingdom in the sky. 
 The valley holds forever, like a shell, 
 An ocean-murmur, and about my dell 
 The pines wait dreaming, too content to sigh. 
 Silence has half her will, nor would I try 
 Another's: here a waif unsought I dwell 
 On whom a rainbow-land has laid her spell, 
 In whom recorded memories fade or die. 
 
 Linger, O day! for at thy heart is peace; 
 Thine asure holds no question; ere thou cease, 
 To be and to be glad is to have done. 
 Pause in the breathless temple of thy noon, 
 Ere yet I drink enchantment from the moon 
 And watch love's star above the sunken sun! 
 
 24 
 
THAT WALK IN DARKNESS 
 
 Not when the sun is captain of the skies, 
 Nor when the sapphire'dwelling moon divine 
 Arrows with light the battlements of pine, 
 Roams Lilith, she whom raptures have made wise; 
 But one shall see her with enchanted eyes 
 When starlight makes mysterious her shrine, 
 That whoso drinks her beauty's golden wine 
 Shall lose his hope and need of Paradise. 
 
 And tho the cruel vision smite him blind, 
 Yet more than they who mourn him is he whole 
 On whom her sorceries have burst in flood, 
 To whom her lips are offered, that he find 
 Her kiss a consternation to the soul 
 And scarlet trumpets pealing in the blood. 
 
INDIAN SUMMER 
 
 Come with me to some woodland where the chill 
 Of autumn stirs with ecstasy the day, 
 Or where the tranquil edges of a bay 
 Shoal to untroubled turquoise, pure and still; 
 There let immortal Beauty have her will 
 In that hushed temple of the year's delay, 
 Crowning thy heavens with her holy ray, 
 While the heart leaps and eyes unbidden fill. 
 
 Assent thou not unto the year's "Alas!" 
 
 Tho all that is depart and leave no trace. 
 
 Suffice it, ere the lonely vision pass, 
 
 That Loveliness be given for a space, 
 
 When, set with stars, the soul's deep waters glass 
 
 The glory and the sorrow of her face. 
 
 26 
 
TO THE MUMMY OF THE LADY ISIS 
 
 IN THE BOHEMIAN CLUB 
 
 No bird shall tell thee of the seasons' flight: 
 Sealed are thine ears that now no longer list. 
 The little veins of temple and of wrist 
 Are food no more for sleepless love's delight, 
 And crumbling in the sessions of thy night, 
 Pylon and sphinx shall be as fleeting mist. 
 Bitter with natron are the lips that kissed, 
 And shorn of dreams the spirit and the sight. 
 
 Ah! dust misused! better to feed the flowY, 
 Than grace the revels of an alien hour, 
 When babe or lord wake never to caress 
 The bosom where unerring Death hath struck 
 And milkless breasts that give the ages suck 
 Stilled in the slumber that is nothingness. 
 
 27 
 
SONNETS ON THE SEA'S VOICE 
 
 I - II / HI - IV 
 
Thou seem'st to call to that which will not hear, 
 As man to Fate. Thine anthems uncontrolled, 
 From winnowed sands and reefs reverberant rolled, 
 Shake as with sorrow, and the hour is near 
 Wherein thy voice shall seem a thing of fear, 
 Like to a lion's at the trembling fold; 
 And men shall waken to the midnight cold, 
 And feel that dawn is far, that night is drear. 
 
 Thou wert ere Life, a dim but quenchless spark, 
 Found vesture in thy vastness. Thou shalt be 
 When Life hath crossed the threshold of the Dark, 
 When shackling ice hath soned at last thy breast, 
 And thy deep voice is hushed, O vanquished Sea! 
 One with eternity that giveth rest. 
 
II 
 
 No cloud is on the heavens, and on the sea 
 No sail: the immortal, solemn ocean lies 
 Unbroken sapphire to the walling skies 
 Immutable, supreme in majesty. 
 The billows, where the charging foam leaps free, 
 Burden the winds with thunder. Soul, arise! 
 For ghostly trumpet-blasts and battle-cries 
 Across the tumult wake the Past for thee. 
 
 They call me to a dim, disastrous land, 
 Where fallen marbles tell of mighty years, 
 Heroic architraves, but where the gust 
 Ripples forsaken waters. Lo! I stand 
 With armies round about, and in mine ears 
 The roar of harps reborn from legend's dust. 
 
HI 
 
 How very still this odorous, dim space 
 Amid the pines! The light is reverent, 
 Pausing as one who stands with meek intent 
 On thresholds of an everlasting place. 
 A single iris waits in weary grace 
 Her countenance before the dawning bent, 
 As Faith might linger, husht and innocent, 
 With all an altar's glory on her face. 
 
 But silence now is hateful: I would be, 
 By midnight dark and wild as Satan's soul, 
 Where the winds' unreturning charioteers 
 Lash, with the hurtling scourges of the sea, 
 Their frantic steeds to some tempestuous goal 
 The deep's enormous music in their ears. 
 
 33 
 
IV 
 
 O thou unalterable sea! how vast 
 Thine utterance! What portent in thy tone, 
 As here thy giant choirs, august, alone, 
 Roll forth their diapason to the blast ! 
 Great waters hurled and broken and upcast 
 In timeless splendour and immeasured moan, 
 As tho Eternity to years unknown 
 Bore witness of the sorrows of the Past. 
 
 Thou callest to a deep within my soul 
 Untraversed and unsounded; at thy voice 
 Abysses move with phantoms unbegot. 
 What paeans haunt me and what pangs control ! 
 Thunders wherewith the seraphim rejoice, 
 And mighty hunger for I know not what. 
 
 34 
 
THE SKULL OF SHAKESPEARE 
 I'll 
 
I 
 
 Without how small, within how strangely vast! 
 What stars of terror had their path in thee! 
 What music of the heavens and the sea 
 Lived in a sigh or thundered on the blast! 
 Here swept the gleam and pageant of the past, 
 As Beauty trembled to her fate's decree; 
 Here swords were forged for armies yet to be, 
 And tears were found too dreadful not to last. 
 
 Here stood the seats of judgment and its light 
 
 To whose assizes all our dreams were led 
 
 Our best and worst, our Paradise and Hell; 
 
 And in this room delivered now to night, 
 
 The mortal put its question to the dead, 
 
 And worlds were weighed, and God's deep shadow fell. 
 
 37 
 
II 
 
 Here an immortal river had its rise, 
 Tho dusty now the fountain whence it ran 
 So swift and beautiful with good to man. 
 Here the foundation of an empire lies 
 The ruins of a realm seen not with eyes, 
 That now the vision of a gnat could scan. 
 Here wars were fought within a little span, 
 Whose echoes yet resound on human skies. 
 
 Life, on her rainbow road from dust to dust, 
 Spilt here her wildest iris, still thine own, 
 Master, and with thy soul and ashes one! 
 Thy wings are distant from our years of lust, 
 Yet he who liveth not by bread alone 
 Shall see thee as that angel in the sun. 
 
SONNETS OF THE NIGHT SKIES 
 
 Aldebaran at Dusk 
 The Chariots of Dawn 
 The Huntress of Stars 
 
ALDEBARAN AT DUSK 
 
 Thou art the star for which all evening waits 
 O star of peace, come tenderly and soon! 
 Nor heed the drowsy and enchanted moon, 
 Who dreams in silver at the eastern gates 
 Ere yet she brim with light the blue estates 
 Abandoned by the eagles of the noon; 
 But shine thou swiftly on the darkling dune 
 And woodlands where the twilight hesitates. 
 
 Above that wide and ruby lake to- West 
 Wherein the sunset waits reluctantly, 
 Stir silently the purple wings of Night. 
 She stands afar, upholding to her breast, 
 As mighty murmurs reach her from the sea, 
 Thy lone and everlasting rose of light. 
 
THE CHARIOTS OF DAWN 
 
 O Night, is this indeed the morning'Star, 
 That now with brandished and impatient beam 
 On eastern heights of darkness flames supreme, 
 Or some great captain of the dawn, whose car 
 Scornful of all thy rearguard ranks that bar 
 His battle, how foreruns the helms that gleam 
 Below horizons of dissevering dream, 
 Who lifts his javelin to his hosts afar? 
 
 Now am I minded of some ocean4dng 
 
 That in a war of gods has wielded arms, 
 
 And still in slumber hears their harness ring 
 
 And dreams of isles where golden altars fume, 
 
 Till, mad for irretrievable alarms, 
 
 He passes down the seas to some strange doom. 
 
THE HUNTRESS OF STARS 
 
 Tell me, O Night! what horses hale the moon! 
 Those of the sun rear now on Syria's day, 
 But here the steeds of Artemis delay 
 At heavenly rivers hidden from the moon, 
 Or quench their starry thirst at cisterns hewn 
 In midnight's deepest sapphire, ere she slay 
 The Bull, and hide the Pleiades' dismay, 
 Or drown Orion in a silver swoon. 
 
 Are those the stars, and not their furious eyes, 
 That now before her coming chariot glare? 
 Is that their nebulous, phantasmal breath 
 Trailed like a mist upon the winter skies, 
 Or vapors from a Titan's pyre of death 
 Far'wafted on the orbit of Altair? 
 
 43 
 
THE COMING SINGER 
 
 The Veil before the mystery of things 
 Shall stir for him with iris and with light; 
 Chaos shall have no terror in his sight 
 Nor earth a bond to chafe his urgent wings; 
 With sandals beaten from the crowns of kings 
 Shall he tread down the altars of their night, 
 And stand with Silence on her breathless height, 
 To hear what song the star of morning sings. 
 
 With perished beauty in his hands as clay, 
 Shall he restore futurity its dream. 
 Behold ! his feet shall take a heavenly way 
 Of choric silver and of chanting fire, 
 Till in his hands unshapen planets gleam, 
 'Mid murmurs from the Lion and the Lyre. 
 
 45 
 
TO MARGARET ANGLIN 
 
 IN THE GREEK TRAGEDIES 
 
 She has heard mighty music from the Past, 
 
 And deathless trumpets from oblivion, 
 
 And she has seen the blood of heroes run 
 
 To stain the morning of a day forecast. 
 
 How high, O Art, the ministry thou hast! 
 
 Behold! the magic of thy chosen one 
 
 Has called their shades from Lethe to the sun, 
 
 And ghosts of gods from heavens that could not last. 
 
 Black on the arras of the years that were, 
 What shadows of immortal armies stir! 
 The stars conspire, and groping by their light, 
 Man seeks for joy and peace, nor knows what loom, 
 Tireless by dusk or noon or deep of night, 
 Runs scarlet with the fabric of his doom. 
 
 46 
 
TO ONE SELF-SLAIN 
 
 The door thou chosest, gave it on the night? 
 
 Ever we ask of whoso openeth 
 
 If day or darkness hold the seats of Death; 
 
 But if the heavy-lidded dead have sight 
 
 Their mouths are loyal to that alien light: 
 
 Amid the Innumerable no one saith 
 
 What waited on the passing of the breath 
 
 Spend not your own: the grave will not requite. 
 
 Phantoms and whispers reach us from the dark 
 
 Mirages vain, mendacities august 
 
 That are but of the living, not the dead. 
 
 Nay! tho I hunger, I in no wise hark 
 
 The fleeting music scattered with thy dust, 
 
 Nor call thy shadow from the House of Dread. 
 
 47 
 
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? 
 
 48 
 
OMNIA EXEUNT IN MYSTERIUM 
 I / II ' m 
 
I 
 
 The stranger in my gates lo! that am I, 
 And what my land of birth I do not know, 
 Nor yet the hidden land to which I go. 
 One may be lord of many ere he die, 
 And tell of many sorrows in one sigh, 
 But know himself he shall not, nor his woe, 
 Nor to what sea the tears of wisdom flow, 
 
 Nor why one star is taken from the sky. 
 
 
 
 An urging is upon him evermore, 
 
 And tho he bide, his soul is wanderer, 
 
 Scanning the shadows with a sense of haste 
 
 Where fade the tracks of all who went before 
 
 A dim and solitary traveller 
 
 On ways that end in evening and the waste. 
 
II 
 
 How dumb the vanished billions who have died ! 
 
 With backward gase conjectural we wait, 
 
 And ere the invading Shadow penetrate, 
 
 The echo from a mighty heart that cried 
 
 Is made a soul memorial to pride. 
 
 From out that night's inscrutable estate 
 
 A few cold voices wander, desolate 
 
 With all that love has lost or grief has sighed. 
 
 r 
 
 Slaves, seamen, captains, councillors and kings, 
 Gone utterly, save for those echoes far! 
 As they before, I tread a forfeit land, 
 Till the supreme and ancient silence flings 
 Its pall between the dreamer and the star. 
 O desert wide! O little grain of sand ! 
 
Ill 
 
 As one that knew not of the sea might come 
 From slender sources of a mountain stream, 
 And, wending where the sandy shallows gleam 
 And boulder'Strewn the stumbling waters hum 
 And white with haste the falling torrents drum, 
 Might stand in darkness at the land's extreme 
 And stare in doubt, where, ghostly and supreme, 
 Muffled in mist and night, the sea lay dumb, 
 
 So shalt thou follow life, a downward rill 
 A'babble as with question and surmise, 
 To wait at last where no star beaconeth, 
 And find the midnight desolate and chill, 
 And face below its indecisive skies 
 The Consummation, mystery and death. 
 
TO LIFE 
 
 Witch and enchantress, I have watched you feed 
 Your children from your cup of poison brew; 
 Subtly you mix the venom and the dew, 
 That, drunken, all may follow where you lead, 
 Thinking a far mirage their nearer need, 
 Whose phantom gardens brighten on the view, 
 Where compensating waters may renew 
 The hearts that thirst, the failing feet that bleed. 
 
 Such is the power of your deluding wine 
 
 I dream I know its magic and design, 
 
 Saying, "So far, no farther, will I sip, 
 
 Ere the draft grow too bitter." Shall there be 
 
 But deepening illusion for the lip, 
 
 And in the dregs a mightier sorcery? 
 
 54 
 
THREE HUNDRED COPIES OF THIS 
 BOOK HAVE BEEN PRINTED FOR 
 THE BOOK CLUB OF CALIFORNIA 
 BY TAYLOR 6? TAYLOR, SAN FRAN- 
 CISCO. THE DECORATIONS ARE BY 
 FREDERIC W. GOUDY, NEW YORK 
 JUNE MDCCCCXVII 
 Dumber