Influential critic H. L. Mencken said of Sterling: “I think his dramatic poem Lilith was the greatest thing he ever wrote.”[1] The New York Times declared Lilith “the finest thing in poetic drama yet done in America and one of the finest poetic dramas yet written in English.”[2] Author Theodore Dreiser said: “It rings richer in thought than any American dramatic poem with which I am familiar.”[3] Poet Clark Ashton Smith wrote: “Lilith is certainly the best dramatic poem in English since the days of Swinburne and Browning.

[8] Credit for reviving Lilith goes to Nebraska poet John Neihardt, best known for Black Elk Speaks.

Neihardt responded: “So at last it has come to pass that my Scipionic cry—Hodie, hodie, Lilith scribenda est!

But I know now that you are most probably writing your masterpiece, and that it is a matter for rejoicing.”[9] Neihardt visited Sterling in San Francisco from late February through early March 1918.

I made the poem moon-haunted, as a symbol of the illusory quality of love and idealism generally, and I ended it with a contrast between pleasure and pain as indicative of that strangest and most awful of human faculties, our ability to be happy when we know others are in agony.

[13] He gave his original manuscript in gratitude to Neihardt, who responded: “I have read Lilith at a single sitting, and it was certainly a fine experience.

Apart from the mood of the whole (which is of supreme importance) there must be no less than one hundred lines that are as bewitching as any in the Language.”[14] Act One: In the garden-close of a medieval castle in France, King Urlan walks with his twenty-year-old son, Prince Tancred, speaking fondly of the king’s dead queen, Tancred’s mother.

In the castle’s vast, dark, vaulted crypt, Tancred holds a torch and with Lilith searches for his mother’s tomb.

Act Two: Seven years later, Tancred and his friend Gavain ride horses to a wizard’s cavern seeking forecasts of their futures.

“Tancred turns alone to the mountains.” Act Four: Twenty years later on the wall of a castle in snow-covered mountains, a cook, Odo the fool, and Raoul the troubadour talk.

They also distrust fifty-year-old Tancred, who has lived in the castle in “his narrow cell” for seven years, searching for wisdom.

In the throne room, Jehanne—who is Lilith—persuades King Gerbert to invite Tancred to a banquet to interrogate him and see if he is a threat.

Three days later, at a banquet, the king, Lilith, the archbishop, and the chancellor decide Tancred’s ideas are heretical and dangerous.

They hear Tancred’s groans of pain coming from a small, low dungeon window; he is being tortured to death.

Raoul stuffs Lilith’s ears with rose petals so she cannot hear Tancred’s groans and the two have sex on the grass.

I am proud to think that I have had something to do with presenting it to the world.”[15] Sterling received his copies of Lilith: A Dramatic Poem in early December 1919.

[16] Sterling gave away 150 copies of Lilith and turned over the other 150 to San Francisco bookseller-publisher Alexander Robertson to sell for him.

[19] Six years later, New York publisher Macmillan Inc. published Lilith in hardcover with an introduction by best-selling author Theodore Dreiser, who wrote: “more definitely than in any play or poem I have ever read is presented the ensorcelling power of sex or passion which so persistently betrays men and women to their ruin.

Only after the Macmillan edition was issued did someone notice that on page 44 a line of stage direction was printed upside-down.

Sterling is a veteran poet … but this grandiose effort betrays him to his worst side, to an almost wholly derivative verse, to all manner of rhetoric, the tawdrily pretty, the grotesque, the pompous.”[22] No other reviewer disliked the play so strongly.

The New York Times reviewer called Lilith “the finest thing in poetic drama yet done in America and one of the finest poetic dramas yet written in English.”[2] Booklist, the journal of the American Library Association, wrote: “There are few recent dramatic poems which are so rich in substance as this one.

George Sterling and the publishers are to be thanked for giving to the general public this deeply moving philosophic poem.”[24] In Outlook, poet Arthur Guiterman pointed out that Theodore Dreiser’s glowing “Introduction” to Lilith might not be unbiased: “If you ask me, I think that Mr. Dreiser is a friend of Mr. Sterling, and that Lilith is an interesting dramatic poem or poetic play, containing passages worthy of Mr. Sterling’s deservedly high reputation.”[25] No production of Lilith has been known to be staged.

[26] Dancer Ruth St. Denis wanted to perform the play, but she asked Sterling to make major revisions.

My friend Earnest Wilkes, who writes plays and has four theatres, wanted to produce Lilith, but I have refused to let him lose money on over-shooting the tastes of the public pig.”[28] The many settings in Lilith, its large cast, its special effects, and the musicians for its songs—factors which would make a stage production costly—seem appropriate for a filmed production, but to date no motion picture nor television version has been created.

In addition to the songs’ publication as part of Lilith, the lyrics to all five were printed separately as poems by magazines and newspapers.

[29] 1926 “Love Song” sheet music combined Sterling’s lyrics with music by Tin Pan Alley composer John Hopkins Densmore, who had composed popular songs, Broadway shows, and the Harvard Band’s famous “Veritas March.”[30] The Scranton Republican reviewed “Love Song,” saying: “A most expressive melody is Mr. Densmore’s vehicle for this lovely verse with a pungent and telling accompaniment.

Reviewing that book in the New York Post, poet and critic William Rose Benét said: “The dirge from Lilith is Greek in its delicate beauty.”[35] Two years after Sterling’s death, “Dirge” was placed as the first song in the 1928 edition of the sheet music collection Songs by Sterling and Zenda.

[36] Later, another former lover of Sterling, orchestral composer Sara Opal Heron Search, also set “Dirge” to music.