Thebaid How many turn back toward dreams and magic, how many children Run home to Mother Church, Father State, To find in …

The Epic Stars The heroic stars spending themselves, Coining their very flesh into bullets for the lost battle, They must burn out …

Shooting Season IN THE NORTH OF SCOTLAND The whole countryside deployed on the hills of heather, an army with banners, The beaters …

No Resurrection Friendship, when a friend meant a helping sword, Faithfulness, when power and life were its fruits, hatred, when the hated …

Going To The Horse Flats Amazingly active a toothless old man Hobbled beside me up the canyon, going to Horse Flats, he …

Antrim No spot of earth where men have so fiercely for ages of time Fought and survived and cancelled each other, Pict …

The Songs Of The Dead Men To The Three Dancers I. TO DESIRE (Here a dancer enters and dances.) Who is she …

The Broken Balance I. Reference to a Passage in Plutarch’s Life of Sulla The people buying and selling, consuming pleasures, talking in …

Salmon-Fishing The days shorten, the south blows wide for showers now, The south wind shouts to the rivers, The rivers open their …

Life From The Lifeless Spirits and illusions have died, The naked mind lives In the beauty of inanimate things. Flowers wither, grass …

Divinely Superfluous Beauty The storm-dances of gulls, the barking game of seals, Over and under the ocean… Divinely superfluous beauty Rules the …

I When I considered it too closely, when I wore it like an element and smelt it like water, Life is become …

To be an ape in little of the mountain-making mother Like swarthy Cheops, but my own hands For only slaves, is a …

The Loving Shepherdess The little one-room schoolhousc among the redwoods Opened its door, a dozen children ran out And saw on the …

Tamar I A night the half-moon was like a dancing-girl, No, like a drunkard’s last half-dollar Shoved on the polished bar of …

Phenomena Great-enough both accepts and subdues; the great frame takes all creatures; From the greatness of their element they all take beauty. …

I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare hillside Above the ocean. I saw through half-shut eyelids …

Boats In A Fog Sports and gallantries, the stage, the arts, the antics of dancers, The exuberant voices of music, Have charm …

The world has many seas, Mediterranean, Atlantic, but here is the shore of the one ocean. And here the heavy future hangs …

The deer were bounding like blown leaves Under the smoke in front the roaring wave of the brush-fire; I thought of the …

Shiva There is a hawk that is picking the birds out of our sky, She killed the pigeons of peace and security, …

No bitterness: our ancestors did it. They were only ignorant and hopeful, they wanted freedom but wealth too. Their children will learn …

Give Your Wish Light By day and night dream about happy death, Poor dog give your heart room, drag at the chain, …

Ante Mortem It is likely enough that lions and scorpions Guard the end; life never was bonded to be endurable nor the …

Vulture I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare hillside Above the ocean. I saw through half-shut …

The Silent Shepherds What’s the best life for a man? –Never to have been born, sings the choros, and the next best …

The Broadstone NEAR FINVOY, COUNTY ANTRIM We climbed by the old quarries to the wide highland of heath, On the slope of …

Rock and Hawk by Robinson Jeffers Here is a symbol in which Many high tragic thoughts Watch their own eyes. This gray …

Let Them Alone If God has been good enough to give you a poet Then listen to him. But for God’s sake …

Distant Rainfall Like mourning women veiled to the feet Tall slender rainstorms walk slowly against gray cloud along the far verge. The …

Time Of Disturbance The best is, in war or faction or ordinary vindictive life, not to take sides. Leave it for children, …

The little biplane that has the river-meadow for landing-field And carries passengers brief rides, Buzzed overhead on the tender blue above the …

Suicide’s Stone Peace is the heir of dead desire, Whether abundance killed the cormorant In a happy hour, or sleep or death …

People And A Heron A desert of weed and water-darkened stone under my western windows The ebb lasted all afternoon, And many …

I followed the narrow cliffside trail half way up the mountain Above the deep river-canyon. There was a little cataract crossed the …

Bixby’s Landing They burned lime on the hill and dropped it down here in an iron car On a long cable; here …

The Wind-Struck Music Ed Stiles and old Tom Birnam went up to their cattle on the bare hills Above Mai Paso; they’d …

The Deer Lay Down Their Bones I followed the narrow cliffside trail half way up the mountain Above the deep river-canyon. There …

Shine, Republic The quality of these trees, green height; of the sky, shining, of water, a clear flow; of the rock, hardness …

Night Without Sleep The world’s as the world is; the nations rearm and prepare to change; the age of tyrants returns; The …

Ghosts In England At East Lulworth the dead were friendly and pitiful, I saw them peek from their ancient earthworks on the …

An Artist That sculptor we knew, the passionate-eyed son of a quarryman, Who astonished Rome and Paris in his meteor youth, and …

To The Stone-Cutters Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated Challengers of oblivion Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down, …

The Purse-Seine Our sardine fishermen work at night in the dark of the moon; daylight or moonlight They could not tell where …

The Bloody Sire It is not bad. Let them play. Let the guns bark and the bombing-plane Speak his prodigious blasphemies. It …

Return A little too abstract, a little too wise, It is time for us to kiss the earth again, It is time …

July Fourth By The Ocean The continent’s a tamed ox, with all its mountains, Powerful and servile; here is for plowland, here …

Delusion Of Saints The old pagan burials, uninscribed rock, Secret-keeping mounds, Have shed the feeble delusions that built them, They stand inhumanly …

This morning Hitler spoke in Danzig, we hear his voice. A man of genius: that is, of amazing Ability, courage, devotion, cored …

The heroic stars spending themselves, Coining their very flesh into bullets for the lost battle, They must burn out at length like …

Subjected Earth Walking in the flat Oxfordshire fields Where the eye can find no rock to rest on but little flints Speckle …

Peace is the heir of dead desire, Whether abundance killed the cormorant In a happy hour, or sleep or death Drowned him …

Hurt Hawks I The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder, The wing trails like a banner in defeat, …

Birth-Dues Joy is a trick in the air; pleasure is merely contemptible, the dangled Carrot the ass follows to market or precipice; …

The universe expands and contracts like a great heart. It is expanding, the farthest nebulae Rush with the speed of light into …

The Dead To Clemenceau NOVEMBER, 1929 Come (we say) Clemenceau. Why should you live longer than others? The vacuum that sucked Us …

Shine, Perishing Republic While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire And protest, only a bubble …

Night The ebb slips from the rock, the sunken Tide-rocks lift streaming shoulders Out of the slack, the slow west Sombering its …

Give Your Heart To The Hawks 1 he apples hung until a wind at the equinox, That heaped the beach with black …

All The Little Hoofprints Farther up the gorge the sea’s voice fainted and ceased. We heard a new noise far away ahead …