In Carmel pines the summer wind
Sings like a distant sea.
O harps of green, your murmurs find
An ecnoing chord in me!
On Carmel shore the breakers moan
Like pines that breast a gale.
O whence, ye winds and billows, flown
To cry your wordless tale?
Perchance the crimson sunsets drown
In waters whence ye sped;
Perchance the sinking stars go down
To seek the Isles ye fled.
Sometimes from ocean dusks I seem
To glimpse their crystal walls,
Dim jewels of mirage that gleam
In twilight's western halls.
Sometimes I hear below the moon
A music that pursues—
A wraith of melody, that soon
I doubt, and douhting, lose.
Those palmy shores no prow may find,
But once it seemed to me
A ghost of fragrance roamed the wind.
Yet was not of the sea.
What tho' my tale the seaman scorns?
The Chart of Dreams, unrolled,
Attests their haven's jasper bourns,
Their reefs of sunken gold.
I do not know what lonely strands
Await the wing éd star;
I only know their evening sands
Seem wonderful and far.
A Wine of Wizardry and Other Poems by George Sterling, A.M Roberston, 1909.