I What's What on the Editor's Desk T SEEMS to me effrontery for one who has never been an editor, to essay a task of this sort—a task connoting wisdom and authority over the spirit of a great poet. But even as I contemplated the matter with misgivings it came to me that there is nothing demanding apology. I, who share with so many others a legacy of happy memories, am not the editor of this magazine issue. It is the poet's own heart and mind that have molded these words, for in life he gathered to him by his works the men and women who now gather here to reflect his image, to interpret his soul. course So I breathe easier. The responsibility is not mine. It is George Sterling's rich personality working its through the minds and hearts of his literary friends. He has written his own epitaph in our hearts. We merely transcribe it into words of love and friendship and remembrance. George Sterling never left unchanged anything with which he as a living, vibrant man came in contact, any more than he will leave unchanged anything which, as a still living poet, his Ariel fingers will touch in the years between now and oblivion. We have but to witness the distinguished list of men and women who have here responded eagerly when given an opportunity to write of him as man or artist. Those of us who knew him most intimately realize that he never pretended to be a paragon from whose heroic figure will be modeled the pious child of tomorrow. He knew his frailties he would have wished me to speak of them as they were, nothing extenuate-his occasional worship of Bacchus and devotion to Venus. But what of it? He was beloved by all. Bacchus invested our poet with an appreciation of the wine, but may it not have been that god also who breathed into him his mellowness of spirit and love of peace? And if he proved, on occasion, an ardent devotee of Venus, was it not that in his blood flowed the exhilaration of the spring, and the glory of life as it had been vouchsafed to him by a bountiful nature? He, like poets before him, felt that life had been given him to use and to enjoy so long as he desired. He filled his cup, and sipped it beautifully. Then, when the wine of life had lost its savor -not when he tasted the dregs, for he never did then only did he toss the cup away. A weak gesture, as our world looks upon it, but it was George Sterling. He was done with life and he, not someone else, should decide when to cast it off! '. . . Near the eternal Peace I (From Sterling's "In Extremis") H. L. Mencken and Gouverneur Morris, meeting at the death-side, called Sterling one of the last of the free spirits. Certainly that final leave-taking proved it. Time re-touches the negative, softens the shadows, etches out the blemishes. Already time's erosion begins to wear away the sharp outline of the living man, and in the years to come he must become an ethereal, perhaps eevn a legendary, figure. It is fitting, therefore, that today those who knew him best and those best qualified to discuss his literary estate, sum up their thoughts here so that the facets of George Sterling's character may continue to sparkle through the years. He died, as he had lived, untrammeled, brave, unafraid. He had the dauntless courage of the great; the willingness to sacrifice himself, his honors, his comforts, the applause of the world, for the right to live with fidelity and integrity to his beloved Muse. In this new era of freedom in poetry, he was willing to wait for the final vindication of his work. What laurels may be placed on his modest head by future generations no one can predict, but it looks today that when the roll of great Californians is called his name will be among the first. Finally, if in our appraisal we have been honest with ourselves and with the friend who is saved to us even through the black pall of death; if we have been able to put into words what we feel in our hearts, then indeed have we fashioned an enduring monument. "Lo! when I hear from voiceless court And hears the blind sea chanting to the sun."-From the Night of Gods," one of Sterling's Three Sonnets on Oblivion. DUE ALBERT M. BENDER.. UE to so many very excellent contributions to the Sterling issue of Overland, we have decided to devote both our November and December numbers to the memory of the man who so generously headed our list of contributing editors and actively directed the destiny of our poetry and wrote each month a page of comment, "Rhymes and Reactions" during the last two years of his life. We feel also, as a courtesy to those who were so kind in their contributions, that better place can be given the writers by devoting two issues to George Sterling, rather than The combining the material in one. entire list of contributors will be given in each number and one number will not be complete without the other. The owners, publishers and editor of Overland Monthly wish to thank Mr. Albert M. Bender for his splendid cooperation and also to extend to those who contributed a like appreciation. Those to appear in the second volume are: Edward F. O'Day. Derrick Norman Lehmer. Charles K. Field. Henry Louis Mencken. (Continued on Page 344) 7ITH next issue, Tom White gives up the active conducting of Over- land Book Page. Mr. White finds his other literary work too pressing to con- tinue this department. He is at work now on a book for publication. will appear "To a Girl Dancing," by George Sterling, one of those gems of his early work. This number will carry an article of general interest for those of our readers who may not be in sympa- thy with our policy of the Sterling issue. We have endeavored to give that same Shall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel, I. O poet of the Carmel promontories, With genius stormy as the stormy seas, The cliffs will miss you and the tortured trees, Twisted and stoopt where the long torn shore is Tormented by the waves that never rest, Surges that seem on some eternal quest— Reminders of your passion and your grief. Your high strange song rusht like this billow-flight That swings from other lands, to break at night In splendor when long leagues of shore and reef Burst into terrible light. You turned and left it all for the husht Hereafter, Life is too deep for any probe of reason, Life is too veiled for any mortal ken— Too deep, too veiled for these bewildered men: Life is a lure, and yet her deeds are treason Against the Love disheartened by the wrongAgainst the Justice baffled by the strongAgainst the Dreams forever dying, yet Refusing ever utterly to die, And ever crying to a silent sky— High Dreams we cannot utterly forget, And yet we know not why. struggle between the opposing warriors for his body. Apollo snatched him from the midst of the roaring combatants, and committed him to the care of the twin brothers, Death and Sleep, who carried him tenderly in airy flight to Lycia-to his own friends, to his own home, to his own land. You did not choose to hold to "the Great Blunder", Who could not be disheartened nor betrayed, We know not all the weight you had to carry, Let no man judge you, friend and bard and brother— Yes, help you as we all must be some day Helpt on life's road which none can go alone, The long road strewn with pitfall and with stone; For 'tis a dangerous and a darkened way, Into the old Unknown. 2 |