Category: Robinson Jeffers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 the eastern hill-range,…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 square-limbed Roman…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hurt Hawks I The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder, The wing trails like a banner in defeat, No more to…

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

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

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

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

Night The ebb slips from the rock, the sunken Tide-rocks lift streaming shoulders Out of the slack, the slow west Sombering its torch; a ship’s…

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

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