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• As It Was in the Beginning
• The royal word goes forth, and armies do 
• The work of devils. Agony and waste 
• Are on the world, and the grim legions haste 
• On the old war-roads that the Caesars knew. 
• Still gleams the dreadful stain of Waterloo, 
• On Time’s accusing record unerased; 
• Gone are the ramparts that the Romans faced, 
• But these the heavens where their eagles flew. 
• Below the bleak and slowly shifting stars, 
• Man turns him in his madness, to reveal 
• His ancient folly and his ancient crime, 
• And on the tragic breast austere with scars 
• Re-girds the mail, and draws the hiked steel, 
• Cold from the twilight battlefields of Time.

• The Black Vulture
• Aloof upon the day’s immeasured 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 fulfillment one, 
• When, poised above the caldrons of the storm, 
•    Their hearts, contemptuous of death, shall dare 
•    His roads between the thunder and the sun.

• Aftermath
• Slowly among the wounded and the slain 
• The gleaners take the harvest of the kings, 
• But harvest-song no joyous maiden sings, 
• And crimson fingers lift a crimson grain. 
• Where darkness and the powers of darkness reign, 
• They bend above unutterable things, 
• As far away the restless searchlight swings 
• Its ghastly ray along the burdened plain. 
• Well seems it that they wear a cross of red, 
• But better seems it that this earth should bear 
• That blazon in the concourse of the stars, 
• (Ere the Night conquer and the sun fall dead) 
• And ‘mid dark Signs and warring heavens glare, 
• Disastrous, with the bloody light of Mars.

George Sterling

George Sterling (1869-1926) was an American poet who made San Francisco and the California Bay Area his base of operations, being largely responsible for making Carmel-by-the-Sea a magnet for the Bohemian artists and writers who would make the community a center of countercultural activity. He became close friends of another poet who had helped put Carmel on the literary map – Robinson Jeffers. While enjoying great popularity during his time – Sterling was celebrated by many of the literary lights of his day, including Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis – his work has fallen into neglect in more recent times. Marked by the influence of the Romantic poets, especially Shelly, Keats and Poe, Sterling’s poetry possesses a visionary and mystical quality. His diaries reveal that he served as the calm hub of the wild Bohemian community that he helped create Carmel; however, the wildness of the lifestyle eventually caught up with him – and he took his own life by ingesting cyanide two weeks short of his 57th birthday.