Bierce arranged for the Washington Post to publish the poem and wrote a preface explaining that though Sterling was a new poet, "he has written a considerable body of verse.

Sometime after December 16, 1901, Sterling began a long poem depicting the galaxies and stars of "the stellar universe at strife, when to the eye it is a symbol of such peace and changelessness … It surely is a war if the cosmic processes are viewed as a whole."

"[15] The Los Angeles Times: "The undeniable merits of the majority of the poems in The House of Orchids make the book an important addition to America's modern poetic literature.

[29] Sterling spiced paragraphs with the rhythms and vividness of verse: "Then silence leaped in upon sound like water above a cast pebble, and the forest resumed its dream.

"[37] Poet Joyce Kilmer, in Literary Digest, decided: "By writing '[A] Wine of Wizardry' and 'The Black Vulture,' George Sterling earned the gratitude of all lovers of poetry.

"So enthusiastic were the clubmen over this little drama that they immediately wired to Sterling at Sag Harbor, Long Island, informing him in all sincerity that it was the most beautiful play that had ever been given in the club's history.

[44] Sterling's long poem was printed in the Examiner, read at the exposition's opening ceremony, excerpted by magazines and books, and in November, published by Alexander Robertson as a 525-copy hardcover limited edition on handmade paper.

The most passionate review came from William Stanley Braithwaite in the Boston Evening Transcript: "However he may express himself in strictly conventionalized forms, they do not seem to impede the really immense scope of his imagination.

"[61] The other national magazine for professional musicians, Musical Leader, concluded its review: "The sentiment expressed in the masque and its pictureful presentation made this one of the banner years in the history of the club.

"[62] On August 15, The Twilight of the Kings was staged in a concert version in San Francisco, with actor Richard Hotaling narrating the action and reading dialog, and professional singers performing the songs.

The Oakland Tribune summed it up: "The story of the princess who was thrown into a world of fighting and lustful men, who was most grievously wronged and who became thereafter an avenger who used her beauty and her love as her weapons, is one that is filled with intense dramatic possibility and as told by Sterling has a tremendous emotional appeal, a noble rhythm, and a tragic atmosphere comparable to that of Macbeth.

… This gesture in the grand manner is in Sails and Mirage admirably subdued, and Sterling's genuine gift for lyricism … issues forth with a pleasing klang for the sensitive ear and the active imagination.

"[78] In the New York Evening Post, poet William Rose Benet remarked on the tenderness and wistfulness of the poems, different from Sterling's earlier echoes of Milton's "mighty line.

"[83] Thirty-six years later, historian David Magee called The Letters of Ambrose Bierce "A most ambitious project and, aside from Cowan's Bibliography [of the History of California and the Pacific West], the most important publication in the [Book] Club's first decade.

These changes echo the contemporary vocabulary of Sterling's new poems, and the advice he currently gave his protégés, such as telling poet Clark Ashton Smith to avoid the word "enfraught" because it "seems too artificial," and to revise a phrase because it "sounds forced, obscure, and unnatural.

[88] The Bookfellows, a Chicago-based national organization of 3,000 booklovers and authors, announced April 28, 1923 Sterling's sonnet "Shelley at Spezia" had won the association's Kemnitz Prize for the best poem of the year.

… In profuse imagination and profound music George Sterling's poetry is always richly endowed, and his followers will find in this volume poems that have won a place for themselves with these qualities.

When American Mercury published the poem, Sterling received a letter from Edgar Lee Masters, who after the publication of his best-selling book Spoon River Anthology had become one of America's best-known poets.

[107] When Sterling died November 17, 1926, he left behind many uncollected or unpublished works: dozens of essays, "seventy-odd short stories," and hundreds of poems most readers had never seen.

It would also finance individual homebuyers' purchases of finished houses, and provide loans to any would-be-homeowner who bought a one-house lot if they wanted to build a home of their own.

"Have a great view, now," London enthused, "a clean sweep of the horizon—San Francisco across the bay, Goat, Angel, and Alcatraz islands, the Golden Gate and the Pacific to say nothing of the Contra Costa and Berkeley hills.

[154] The Sterlings' American Craftsman bungalow had a thirty-foot-long by eighteen-foot-wide living room with oiled redwood paneling, a fireplace, and chimney made from Carmel stone.

More than 100,000 San Franciscans fled to East Bay cities such as Oakland, Berkeley, and Emeryville,[161] where Sterling's uncle Frank kept him busy as his companies exploded with growth.

[169] In 1910 Frank Havens and his partner Francis M. Smith were dividing their jointly-owned empire of corporations, so Sterling spent most of January, February, and April away from Carmel, working on the split.

[171] In May, the Los Angeles Times printed a long, satiric profile of Carmel headlined "Where Author and Artist Folk Are Establishing the Most Amazing Colony on Earth" by Willard Huntington Wright (later a millionaire for writing Philo Vance mysteries under his pen name S. S. Van Dine), with four cartoons by Edmund "Ted" Waller Gale.

[178] Sterling reported: "some of them [his Carmel neighbors] fight shy of me, because they think I'm immoral—or unmoral: Grace [MacGowan] Cook[e], [Arthur H.] Vachell, and the [Frederick] Bechdolts are the worst.

The Washington Post story, headlined "Loves and Art Clash: Mrs. G. Sterling Seeks Divorce from Famous Poet," featured a big photo of Carrie and quoted her sister Nell: "The only charge is that of incompatibility of temperament.

Except for trips to Hollywood to write plays and movies and one more successful stay in New York, Sterling lived for the rest of his life in the Bohemian Club.

The following warm, sunny Thursday afternoon, in Carrie Sterling's cottage on the Havens estate in Piedmont, she "put on her newest gown," lay down on her bed, drank poison, clasped a rose in her hands, and died.

"[197] Writers influenced by Sterling include Jack London (as described in "Life and business career" section above), Clark Ashton Smith, Robinson Jeffers, Audrey Wurdemann, Sinclair Lewis, Ray Bradbury, Porter Garnett, Fritz Lieber, Frances Marion, and others.