George Sterling > Quotes

“A prison becomes a home when you have the key.”
― George Sterling

“Within its gates I heard the sound
Of winds in cypress caverns caught
Of huddling tress that moaned, and sought
To whisper what their roots had found.
(“A Dream of Fear”)”
― George Sterling, The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror

“And starward drifts the stricken world,
Lone in unalterable gloom
Dead, with a universe for tomb,
Dark, and to vaster darkness whirled.
(“The Testimony of the Suns”)”
― George Sterling, The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror

“As a breath on glass, -
As witch-fires that burn,
The gods and monsters pass,
Are dust, and return.
(“The Face of the Skies”)”
― George Sterling, The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror

“When sunset, like a crimson throat to hell, is cavernous...
(“A Wine of Wizardry”)”
― George Sterling, The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror

“Where got she her sullen mouth
And where her swaying form?
Would she live on eggs and apples
When the blood of men is warm?
(“The Young Witch”)”
― George Sterling, The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror

“And fragile is thy tenure of this world
Still haunted by the monstrous ghost of God.
("To Science")”
― George Sterling, The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror

“O Space and Time and stars at strife,
How dreadful your infinity!
Shrined by your termless trinity,
How strange, how terrible, is life!
(“The Testimony of the Suns”)”
― George Sterling, The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror

“What silence rules the ghostly hours
That guard the close of human sleep!
(“The Testimony of the Suns”)”
― George Sterling, The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror

“Till her appointed course be run;
Till on the darkness faint her breath
Flown to the silent void, and Death
Sit crowned upon the ashen sun.
(“The Testimony of the Suns”)”
― George Sterling, The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror

“The candle glimmers but an hour. The night
Looms in its ancient hunger. Would you know
The tragedy of human love and need?
Gaze on the stars, then on a brother's face!”
― George Sterling, The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror

“The pathway traced with blood and tears,
and dust of all our father's dead,
Whose backward footsteps, wandering, red,
Fade to the mist of nameless years.
(“The Testimony of the Suns”)”
― George Sterling, The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror

“Be sure that head and heart were laid
In wisdom down, content to die.
Be sure he faced the Starless Sky
Unduped, unmurmuring, unafraid.
(“The Passing of Bierce”)”
― George Sterling, The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror

“A little while, their hunger unfulfilled,
The mothlike worlds flit 'round the guttering sun.
("Ephemera")”
― George Sterling, The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror

“Or sit they girt by laws unknown
Whereto the senses serve as bars –
With fire of unrecorded stars
That light a heaven not our own?
(“The Testimony of the Suns”)”
― George Sterling, The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror

“The mountain seems no more a soulless thing,
But rather as a shape of ancient fear,
In darkness and the winds of Chaos born
Amid the lordless heavens' thundering-
A Presence crouched, enormous and austere,
Before whose feet the mighty waters mourn.”
― George Sterling

“For mystery hath lordship here, and ye
Seem spirit-flowers born to startle man
With intimations of eternity
And hint of what the flowers of Heaven may be.”
― George Sterling, The House of Orchids, and other poems