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Robinson Jeffers: Selected Poems
Robinson Jeffers died in 1962 at the age of seventy-five, ending one of the most controversial poetic careers of this century.
The son of a theology professor at Western Seminary in Pittsburgh, Jeffers was taught Greek, Latin, and Hebrew as a boy, and spent three years in Germany and Switzerland before entering the University of Western Pennsylvania (now Pittsburgh) at fifteen. His education continued on the West Coast after his parents moved there, and he received a B.A. from Occidental College at eighteen. His interest in forestry, medicine, and general science led him to pursue his studies at the University of Southern California, and the University of Zurich.
The poems in this volume have been selected from his major works, among them Be Angry at the Sun; Hungerfield; The Double Axe; Roan Stallion; Tamar and Other Poems; as well as The Beginning and the End, which contains his last poems.
The son of a theology professor at Western Seminary in Pittsburgh, Jeffers was taught Greek, Latin, and Hebrew as a boy, and spent three years in Germany and Switzerland before entering the University of Western Pennsylvania (now Pittsburgh) at fifteen. His education continued on the West Coast after his parents moved there, and he received a B.A. from Occidental College at eighteen. His interest in forestry, medicine, and general science led him to pursue his studies at the University of Southern California, and the University of Zurich.
The poems in this volume have been selected from his major works, among them Be Angry at the Sun; Hungerfield; The Double Axe; Roan Stallion; Tamar and Other Poems; as well as The Beginning and the End, which contains his last poems.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
26 people are currently reading
661 people want to read
About the author
Robinson Jeffers
125 books203 followersCollections of American poet John Robinson Jeffers, who sets many of his works in California, include Tamar and Other Poems (1924).
He knew the central coast and wrote mostly in classic narrative and epic form. Nevertheless, people today know also his short verse and consider him an symbol of the environmental movement.
The Harry Ransom humanities research center at the University of Texas at Austin and the libraries at Occidental College, the University of California, and Yale University collect many manuscripts and materials of Jeffers. Survivors published a collection of his letters posthumously as The Selected Letters of Robinson Jeffers, 1887–1962 (1968). Jeffers wrote other books or criticism and poetry: are: Poetry, Gongorism, and a Thousand Years (1949), Themes in My Poems (1956), Robinson Jeffers: Selected Poems (1965), The Alpine Christ and Other Poems (1974), What Odd Expedients" and Other Poems (1981), and Rock and Hawk: A Selection of Shorter Poems by Robinson Jeffers (1987).
Stanford University Press recently released a five-volume collection of the complete works of Robinson Jeffers. In an article titled, "A Black Sheep Joins the Fold", written upon the release of the collection in 2001, Stanford Magazine ably remarked that due to a number of circumstances, "there was never an authoritative, scholarly edition of California’s premier bard" until Stanford published the complete works.
Biographical studies include George Sterling, Robinson Jeffers: The Man and the Artist (1926); Louis Adamic, Robinson Jeffers (1929); Melba Bennett, Robinson Jeffers and the Sea (1936) and The Stone Mason of Tor House (1966); Edith Greenan, Of Una Jeffers (1939); Mabel Dodge Luhan, Una and Robin (1976; written in 1933); Ward Ritchie, Jeffers: Some Recollections of Robinson Jeffers (1977); and James Karman, Robinson Jeffers: Poet of California (1987). Books about Jeffers's career include L. C. Powell, Robinson Jeffers: The Man and His Work (1940; repr. 1973); William Everson, Robinson Jeffers: Fragments of an Older Fury (1968); Arthur B. Coffin, Robinson Jeffers: Poet of Inhumanism (1971); Bill Hotchkiss, Jeffers: The Sivaistic Vision (1975); James Karman, ed., Critical Essays on Robinson Jeffers (1990); Alex Vardamis The Critical Reputation of Robinson Jeffers (1972); and Robert Zaller, ed., Centennial Essays for Robinson Jeffers (1991). The Robinson Jeffers Newsletter, ed. Robert Brophy, is a valuable scholarly resource.
In a rare recording, Jeffers can be heard reading his "The Day Is A Poem" (September 19, 1939) on Poetry Speaks – Hear Great Poets Read Their Work from Tennyson to Plath, Narrated by Charles Osgood (Sourcebooks, Inc., c2001), Disc 1, #41; including text, with Robert Hass on Robinson Jeffers, pp. 88–95. Jeffers was also on the cover of Time – The Weekly Magazine, April 4, 1932 (pictured on p. 90. Poetry Speaks).
"Jeffers Studies", a journal of research on the poetry of Robinson Jeffers and related topics, is published semi-annually by the Robinson Jeffers Association.
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September 14, 2019
At first glance, poet Robinson Jeffers—born in 1887—might look like some kind of early beatnik or proto-hippie. An environmentalist, he wrote lyrically about the beauties of the California coast, and believed nature should be seen as the center of all; a seeker of truth, he was impressed by the personality of the theosophical “guru” Krishnamurti; a pacifist, he made himself highly unpopular by his opposition to World War II. Both environmental anarchist Edward Abbey (author of The Monkey Wrench Gang) and Zen poet Gary Snyder (inspiration for Kerouac's Japhy Ryder in The Dharma Bums) were his admirers, and Charles Bukowski once called him his favorite poet. He wrote long free verse poems with transgressive themes, such as bestiality and incest and family murder, and he lived with his wife and two children in a stone dwelling, “Tor House,” which he built with his own hands.
But Jeffers wouldn't have made a good beatnik, let alone a good hippie. He was no humanist, but instead—in a phrase he coined—an “inhumanist,” who looked to nature as the center of everything and considered man to be too self-regarding and solipsistic to even experience beauty--at least without undergoing a radical shift of focus. He only admired Krishnamurti after Krishnamurti had rejected his own theosophical guru-ship, declaring truth to be a “pathless land,” and he opposed war not because he loved or wished to preserve humankind, but because he despised human civilizations in general and feared the great damage its wars would do to the indifferent beauty of earth.
The son of a Presbyterian minister and biblical scholar, from an early age Robinson Jeffers read the bible and studied the Greek and Latin classics, and each of his poems—whether long narrative or terse lyric—combine the fierce prophetic voice of Jeremiah, the majesty of Sophocles, and the withering contempt of Juvenal. It is a voice which awes and compels, but it is not always easy to like.
The twenty pages of “Roan Stallion”--a little less than a fifth of the book--will give the reader some idea of his epic and dramatic narratives, but the rest of the collection is made up of the poems I prefer: his shorter lyrical, political and satirical pieces. Of these “To the Stone Cutters,” “Shine, Perishing Republic,” “Hurt Hawks,” “Love the Wild Swan,” “The Purse-Seine,” “Original Sin,” and “Skunks” are masterpieces—and ten pages like this--of monumental, flawless verse--are more than enough to make a master.
But most of the other poems here are excellent too. Here is one of them:
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 until he is dead; no prizes, no ceremony,
They kill the man. A poet is one who listens
To nature and his own heart; and if he is tough enough,
He can shake off his enemies but not his friends.
That is what withered Wordsworth and muffled Tennyson, and would have killed Keats; that is what makes
Hemingway play the fool and Faulkner forget his art.
February 11, 2012
When he was alive I paid very little attention to Robinson Jeffers. My attention to poetry was taken up with American poets who wove a tighter fabric of meaning or at least of implication: Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound. But picking Jeffers up in 2011 I enjoyed and respected his verse. Early in this selection it is metrical and resonant. It has gut satisfaction. It is straightforward. He is resonant in denunciation. That's no small virtue. I think of 18th-century poets like Pope and Charles Churchill. As the years pass it wanders towards prose. In these years he suffered and expressed disgust at human behavior in the Second World War, and the loss of his wife and become more and more bitter. He tends to eulogize nature, not a pretty, but a strong, statuesque nature, not friendly but authoritative, particularly as geology and as raptors. He praises the violence in nature; it excites his imagination, but tends to deplore violence in people. As the years go on he tends to repeat himself, and some of his later poems seem like self-parodies. It is said that Robert Frost quipped of Jeffers, "It is wise to praise the hawk, but not too often.”
June 13, 2025
Jeffers hymns of a Nature which is totally unsentimentalized and radically evasive of such perversions as new age romanticism concerning the environment and the implicit heresy of humanism contained therein. It is the inhuman, but very much living, primordial, indifferent, amoral, pulse of all things which speaks through his poetry. Life is sacrosanct in the degree to which it is spontaneously in accord with the raging Fire of all time, the eternal surging forth and self-destruction of something of which our small human world is only a brief cosmic side effect.
Only the wicked love what is human because it is human--and Jeffers pulls no punches from those who would think they can inaugurate something more than what is found in Nature in society. The ideals of humanity will always be run into the dirt. The dirt is ever more sacred.
Only the wicked love what is human because it is human--and Jeffers pulls no punches from those who would think they can inaugurate something more than what is found in Nature in society. The ideals of humanity will always be run into the dirt. The dirt is ever more sacred.
December 18, 2021
Even more misanthropic than me, which is no mean feat; but the the poems are astoundingly beautiful. One of my new favorites.
August 6, 2022
I have never read Jeffers before. I don't know why I didn't even know who he was. Now...he's one of my favorite poets.
September 5, 2015
This is a nice, brief introduction to the poetry of Robinson Jeffers. Jeffers is an under-appreciated American poet--partly from his opposition to the world wars and partly because his naturalism veers into anti-humanism. Like Whitman, he is a master of a longer line, but he has far more control over his lines than most Whitman-esque poets nor does he share the humanism of American poets like Whitman, Sandburg, and Ginsburg. In many ways, his poetry has the bleak beauty of the West Coast: jagged, controlled, and sometimes inhospitable.
The poems for inclusion range from 1924 thru 1962, which are generally considered Jeffers' "mature years." A few of his earlier narrative poems are included, of which "Roan Stallion" is probably the most famous and representative. Many of his oft repeated themes come up in the poem: blood-lust, myth-ritual, natural indifference, blood memory, etc. Much of his anti-war poetry is included "We Are Those People," "So Many Blood Lakes," "Calm and Full the Ocean." "Shine Perishing Republic," and "Woodrow Wilson." Much of his natural lyrics are included too such as "Vulture" and "Hurt Hawks," which are nearly misanthropic in their view of natural power.
There are much better anthologies of Jeffers' work now: editor Tim Hunt's "The Selected Poems of Robinson Jeffers" and editor/poet Albert Gelpi's "The Wild God of This World" are both more extensive and inclusive. However, this is probably the best brief introduction even if it is from 1965.
The poems for inclusion range from 1924 thru 1962, which are generally considered Jeffers' "mature years." A few of his earlier narrative poems are included, of which "Roan Stallion" is probably the most famous and representative. Many of his oft repeated themes come up in the poem: blood-lust, myth-ritual, natural indifference, blood memory, etc. Much of his anti-war poetry is included "We Are Those People," "So Many Blood Lakes," "Calm and Full the Ocean." "Shine Perishing Republic," and "Woodrow Wilson." Much of his natural lyrics are included too such as "Vulture" and "Hurt Hawks," which are nearly misanthropic in their view of natural power.
There are much better anthologies of Jeffers' work now: editor Tim Hunt's "The Selected Poems of Robinson Jeffers" and editor/poet Albert Gelpi's "The Wild God of This World" are both more extensive and inclusive. However, this is probably the best brief introduction even if it is from 1965.
August 12, 2019
I’ve been reading a poetry anthology over the past few weeks, and it’s been sort of a grind, really. I’ve read most of the works in the anthology many times, and many of the rest are duds. But the anthology has a few poems by Robinson Jeffers sprinkled through its pages, and they alone have been enough to make it worthwhile.
Before picking up this slim paperback copy of the Selected Poems of Robinson Jeffers at a used bookstore recently, I hadn’t read hardly any of his work. Other than the anthology mentioned above and a quote or two on the Internet, I don’t remember having read any Jeffers at all. My college literature professors failed me.
I loved these poems. Jeffers may not write the loveliest verses I’ve ever read, but he writes with such wisdom and with so much clarity about the predicament of the modern man that I immediately connected with him. He is a theologian and philosopher. He is a sharp eyed observer of human nature and of the beauty of the California coastline. I haven’t liked a volume of poetry so much since I first read Philip Larkin’s collected works a couple decades ago (not that Larkin writes at all like Jeffers). I’ll have to read a lot more Jeffers. This book is very short, only 107 pages. It’s just a taste really, and I plan to thoroughly dig in.
Before picking up this slim paperback copy of the Selected Poems of Robinson Jeffers at a used bookstore recently, I hadn’t read hardly any of his work. Other than the anthology mentioned above and a quote or two on the Internet, I don’t remember having read any Jeffers at all. My college literature professors failed me.
I loved these poems. Jeffers may not write the loveliest verses I’ve ever read, but he writes with such wisdom and with so much clarity about the predicament of the modern man that I immediately connected with him. He is a theologian and philosopher. He is a sharp eyed observer of human nature and of the beauty of the California coastline. I haven’t liked a volume of poetry so much since I first read Philip Larkin’s collected works a couple decades ago (not that Larkin writes at all like Jeffers). I’ll have to read a lot more Jeffers. This book is very short, only 107 pages. It’s just a taste really, and I plan to thoroughly dig in.
July 22, 2016
Robinson Jeffers thinks of life like a kid who can’t play basketball, and now wants to ban the sport. He’s a man constantly dreaming of death, but in a twist of irony, he didn’t kill himself or completely stop eating. I guess death isn’t so fun when you can’t dream about it.
Jeffers’ Freudian “Death Drive” must have been in overdrive. Even Schopenhauer would have talked Jeffers back from the ledge. Jeffers poetry suffers from a breathtakingly mellifluous denial of the human situation. While Jeffers does not recognize any moral depravity in animal or vegetable, and sometimes even excusing all humans from immorality—not ‘good’ or ‘evil’, but beings who “mean well”—he is quick to want to sweep all being and matter to the big trash bin of oblivion. He has apparently had enough, and he’s decided the rest of us has had enough too. I think it’s a good thing the ‘fire project’ button for the universe wasn’t within arms-reach of him.
Though he was reportedly interested in Nietzsche’s writings, the mood of his poems are a far cry from the life-affirming, life-surpassing things that Nietzsche’s works were. Nietzsche himself would probably have considered Jeffers a downer…which Nietzsche most definitely was NOT. Nietzsche condemned whiny, world-weary souls (religious or otherwise) who looked too far backwards or forwards, and begged for the punishment of life to be over.
“Weariness, which seeketh to get to the ultimate with one leap, with a death-leap; a poor ignorant weariness, unwilling even to will any longer: that created all God’s and backworlds” (Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra).
Nietzsche had no time for people who just wanted quiet lives and quiet deaths, and he didn't believe the point of existence was to avoid struggle; rather, he conceived of life as a realm where joy can be so rich and profound that it “thirsts for woe.”
“O man! Take heed!
What saith deep midnight's voice indeed?
I slept my sleep—
From deepest dream I've woke and plead:—
The world is deep,
And deeper than the day could read.
Deep is its woe—
Joy—deeper still than grief can be:
Woe saith: Hence! Go!
But joys all want eternity—
Want deep profound eternity!" (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
Even in the tradition of the 20th century existentialists, a nihilist like Jeffers—for that’s what he appears to be—would fall into the category of a denial of freedom and a flight from self and existence. It’s basically self-rejection.
“All in a simple innocence I strove
To give myself away to any power…
I failed, I could not give away my soul.” (The Truce And The Peace)
He’s what Simone de Beauvoir, the French activist and philosopher, would have described as a “sub-man” who has an increasingly destructive bent against one’s own existence that stems from the deep anguish brought on by the responsibility to live and create new values. Not sure if he would agree, but he also didn’t have to READ HIS OWN BOOKS LIKE I DO! Okay….I just totally sub-manned it. Sorry. Ahem. I’m back.
Let’s face it, Jeffers wanted to die. He had clearly euphemized death into some kind of euphoric peace, which I don’t understand since peace is a state of mind and being, and not a state of mindlessness and beinglessness.
“[Death] said, Come home, here is an end, a goal
Victory you know requires
Force to sustain victory, the burden is never lightened, but final defeat
Buys peace. (Woodrow Wilson)
So, peace in the womb and peace in the grave is what you always wanted? Making sure I understand here: it’s what you always wanted as long as you were able to want, which you are only capable of in this life, so you’re basically using your life to bitch about life? So, just die then! What’s with all the poetry? Why write about hating to be alive to write? Unless...life really is worth it in some way, and whining just helps people blow off steam.
I’m a big believer with the other existentialist thinkers that nothingness proceeds (comes after!) being and “plays on the surface of being.” Even the very idea of ‘nothing’ is only a maneuver of consciousness to separate out oneself from matter and think of self as ‘not that’. In the words of Jean Paul Sartre, “Human reality secretes a nothingness which isolates itself…and this is called freedom.”
Imagine, if you will, the process of a consciousness. A person is born, and their consciousness, or self, begins to distinguish itself from its environment. Then it begins to account for ‘space between’ as a metric for that distinction. For some people, this consciousness, this subjectivity, that is now independent of the objective world may begin to feel so alone and isolated that it wishes everything back ‘into the box’. It begins to wish even for an identity that is the empty space itself between, before, and after self and world, and neither subject or object!
“Surely you never have dreamed the incredible depths were prologue and epilogue merely
To the surface play in the sun, the instant of life, what is called life?
I fancy that silence is the thing, this noise a found word for it.” (The Treasure)
However, HOWEVER, besides sounding like complete nonsense—which, I admit, the best of any of our ideas sound like sometimes—it is an expression of pain and loneliness; and I suppose that THAT always is valid, no matter how it is expressed. It’s sad that some people feel that way so much of the time, but pity from others, or worse—self-pity—will only make things worse. Get out of there Jeffers! She’s gonna blow!
But one thing gives me hope: Jeffers didn’t commit suicide. He kept writing and speaking and living. He must have liked life more than he admitted. Maybe his words were, as author Paul Tillich liked to put it, “a courageous expression of decay” which tacitly affirmed self even while seeming to disavow his life.
So, maybe I’ve been a little hard on him. Maybe I heard too much about him protesting the U.S.’s involvement in WWII. Maybe, just maybe, he still loved life, even if he allegedly loved death a little bit more.
“And I and my people, we are willing to love the four-score years
Heartily; but as a sailor loves the sea, when the helm is for harbor.” (Night)
And, to be honest, there were some pretty awesomely awesome lines in his collected poetry that left me stunned with their beauty. Even some of the lines which I hated for the philosophy, I loved for the gorgeous way they were expressed, and the way I was challenged to look outside my normal perspective and feel with others.
And, if I’m being honest and not just biting his head off for fun—which I do to the delight of some of my more blood-thirsty readers—even some of his odes-to-death were beautiful in that they helped me not fear death so much. I happen to think that a limited will-to-death may be an authentic coping mechanism of over-exposure and reinterpretation of the thing we fear most—death—and may even be healthy to a certain extent. As another example of what I liked, I lift up the poem “Mediation On Saviors” in which he is critical of what people look for in their heroes, “This people has not outgrown blood-sacrifice, one must writhe on the high cross to catch at their memories.” Good stuff there, no doubt.
All said, I do think Jeffers fell face forward into his morning bowl of death-soup and drowned his will to live, but he left a few helpful things behind. And for that, I’m thankful.
Best poems:
The Truce And The Peace
Shine Perishing Republic
The Treasure
Woodrow Wilson
The Old Man’s Dream After He Died
Like this review? Clicking ‘like’ lets me know someone’s reading! For more reviews, visit my blog at www.bookburningservice.blogspot.com and start following!
Jeffers’ Freudian “Death Drive” must have been in overdrive. Even Schopenhauer would have talked Jeffers back from the ledge. Jeffers poetry suffers from a breathtakingly mellifluous denial of the human situation. While Jeffers does not recognize any moral depravity in animal or vegetable, and sometimes even excusing all humans from immorality—not ‘good’ or ‘evil’, but beings who “mean well”—he is quick to want to sweep all being and matter to the big trash bin of oblivion. He has apparently had enough, and he’s decided the rest of us has had enough too. I think it’s a good thing the ‘fire project’ button for the universe wasn’t within arms-reach of him.
Though he was reportedly interested in Nietzsche’s writings, the mood of his poems are a far cry from the life-affirming, life-surpassing things that Nietzsche’s works were. Nietzsche himself would probably have considered Jeffers a downer…which Nietzsche most definitely was NOT. Nietzsche condemned whiny, world-weary souls (religious or otherwise) who looked too far backwards or forwards, and begged for the punishment of life to be over.
“Weariness, which seeketh to get to the ultimate with one leap, with a death-leap; a poor ignorant weariness, unwilling even to will any longer: that created all God’s and backworlds” (Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra).
Nietzsche had no time for people who just wanted quiet lives and quiet deaths, and he didn't believe the point of existence was to avoid struggle; rather, he conceived of life as a realm where joy can be so rich and profound that it “thirsts for woe.”
“O man! Take heed!
What saith deep midnight's voice indeed?
I slept my sleep—
From deepest dream I've woke and plead:—
The world is deep,
And deeper than the day could read.
Deep is its woe—
Joy—deeper still than grief can be:
Woe saith: Hence! Go!
But joys all want eternity—
Want deep profound eternity!" (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
Even in the tradition of the 20th century existentialists, a nihilist like Jeffers—for that’s what he appears to be—would fall into the category of a denial of freedom and a flight from self and existence. It’s basically self-rejection.
“All in a simple innocence I strove
To give myself away to any power…
I failed, I could not give away my soul.” (The Truce And The Peace)
He’s what Simone de Beauvoir, the French activist and philosopher, would have described as a “sub-man” who has an increasingly destructive bent against one’s own existence that stems from the deep anguish brought on by the responsibility to live and create new values. Not sure if he would agree, but he also didn’t have to READ HIS OWN BOOKS LIKE I DO! Okay….I just totally sub-manned it. Sorry. Ahem. I’m back.
Let’s face it, Jeffers wanted to die. He had clearly euphemized death into some kind of euphoric peace, which I don’t understand since peace is a state of mind and being, and not a state of mindlessness and beinglessness.
“[Death] said, Come home, here is an end, a goal
Victory you know requires
Force to sustain victory, the burden is never lightened, but final defeat
Buys peace. (Woodrow Wilson)
So, peace in the womb and peace in the grave is what you always wanted? Making sure I understand here: it’s what you always wanted as long as you were able to want, which you are only capable of in this life, so you’re basically using your life to bitch about life? So, just die then! What’s with all the poetry? Why write about hating to be alive to write? Unless...life really is worth it in some way, and whining just helps people blow off steam.
I’m a big believer with the other existentialist thinkers that nothingness proceeds (comes after!) being and “plays on the surface of being.” Even the very idea of ‘nothing’ is only a maneuver of consciousness to separate out oneself from matter and think of self as ‘not that’. In the words of Jean Paul Sartre, “Human reality secretes a nothingness which isolates itself…and this is called freedom.”
Imagine, if you will, the process of a consciousness. A person is born, and their consciousness, or self, begins to distinguish itself from its environment. Then it begins to account for ‘space between’ as a metric for that distinction. For some people, this consciousness, this subjectivity, that is now independent of the objective world may begin to feel so alone and isolated that it wishes everything back ‘into the box’. It begins to wish even for an identity that is the empty space itself between, before, and after self and world, and neither subject or object!
“Surely you never have dreamed the incredible depths were prologue and epilogue merely
To the surface play in the sun, the instant of life, what is called life?
I fancy that silence is the thing, this noise a found word for it.” (The Treasure)
However, HOWEVER, besides sounding like complete nonsense—which, I admit, the best of any of our ideas sound like sometimes—it is an expression of pain and loneliness; and I suppose that THAT always is valid, no matter how it is expressed. It’s sad that some people feel that way so much of the time, but pity from others, or worse—self-pity—will only make things worse. Get out of there Jeffers! She’s gonna blow!
But one thing gives me hope: Jeffers didn’t commit suicide. He kept writing and speaking and living. He must have liked life more than he admitted. Maybe his words were, as author Paul Tillich liked to put it, “a courageous expression of decay” which tacitly affirmed self even while seeming to disavow his life.
So, maybe I’ve been a little hard on him. Maybe I heard too much about him protesting the U.S.’s involvement in WWII. Maybe, just maybe, he still loved life, even if he allegedly loved death a little bit more.
“And I and my people, we are willing to love the four-score years
Heartily; but as a sailor loves the sea, when the helm is for harbor.” (Night)
And, to be honest, there were some pretty awesomely awesome lines in his collected poetry that left me stunned with their beauty. Even some of the lines which I hated for the philosophy, I loved for the gorgeous way they were expressed, and the way I was challenged to look outside my normal perspective and feel with others.
And, if I’m being honest and not just biting his head off for fun—which I do to the delight of some of my more blood-thirsty readers—even some of his odes-to-death were beautiful in that they helped me not fear death so much. I happen to think that a limited will-to-death may be an authentic coping mechanism of over-exposure and reinterpretation of the thing we fear most—death—and may even be healthy to a certain extent. As another example of what I liked, I lift up the poem “Mediation On Saviors” in which he is critical of what people look for in their heroes, “This people has not outgrown blood-sacrifice, one must writhe on the high cross to catch at their memories.” Good stuff there, no doubt.
All said, I do think Jeffers fell face forward into his morning bowl of death-soup and drowned his will to live, but he left a few helpful things behind. And for that, I’m thankful.
Best poems:
The Truce And The Peace
Shine Perishing Republic
The Treasure
Woodrow Wilson
The Old Man’s Dream After He Died
Like this review? Clicking ‘like’ lets me know someone’s reading! For more reviews, visit my blog at www.bookburningservice.blogspot.com and start following!
February 19, 2012
This is the first volume of Jeffers' poetry that I have read, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. To begin, his straightforward verse is at once beautiful, and absolutely descriptive. I recently drove down California 1, and reading some of these poems, I felt as if Jeffers described exact places that I stopped and took in. His clear love of nature and place is the true gift of this poetry, and outweighs the sometimes paranoid view of the future and our country's role in it.
The first poem, "To the Stone-Cutters," in the volume is magical:
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you fore defeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
Many of the poems evoke other American poets, such as Frost in "Continent's End" when he ends with the verse "Before there was any water there were tides of fire, both our tones flow from the older fountain."
"Shine, Perishing Republic" is to me the most representative of his collection of warning poems, poems that attempt to call to our attention the horrific reality of our country, and the progress of history towards destruction. In case you aren't clear how he feels, read "Be Angry at the Sun." "Shakespeare's Grave" is beautiful and wistful. However, in the end, I think his mind is revealed most clearly with the lines from one of his masterpieces, "Roan Stallion":
Humanity
is the start of the race; I say
Humanity is the mould to break away from, the crust to
break through, the coal to break into fire,
The atom to be split.
I think Jeffers wanted this more than anything. This is a great volume of poetry, from a great American poet.
The first poem, "To the Stone-Cutters," in the volume is magical:
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you fore defeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
Many of the poems evoke other American poets, such as Frost in "Continent's End" when he ends with the verse "Before there was any water there were tides of fire, both our tones flow from the older fountain."
"Shine, Perishing Republic" is to me the most representative of his collection of warning poems, poems that attempt to call to our attention the horrific reality of our country, and the progress of history towards destruction. In case you aren't clear how he feels, read "Be Angry at the Sun." "Shakespeare's Grave" is beautiful and wistful. However, in the end, I think his mind is revealed most clearly with the lines from one of his masterpieces, "Roan Stallion":
Humanity
is the start of the race; I say
Humanity is the mould to break away from, the crust to
break through, the coal to break into fire,
The atom to be split.
I think Jeffers wanted this more than anything. This is a great volume of poetry, from a great American poet.
November 26, 2009
I found this slim volume on the bookshelf of the home we are staying in in Carmel. I had been meaning to visit Tor House while we were here and now hope that perhaps I will before we leave.
Along with the book I found a Reader's Guide published by The National Endowment of the Arts in collaboration with the Poetry Foundation in an effort called The Big Read. I encourage anyone who sees this to visit their site at www.NEABigRead.org. It is an amazing site filled with books of all kinds and information about the writers, their lives and books.
Poetry is not my first love because it is so hard to wrap my mind around unless I know why they were written or just happen upon a line or verse that speaks to me personally.
However, the artistic works of this man are something anyone could relate to. Even though they were written years past they speak of things people feel strongly about today. Jeffers has been called an 'early environmentalist' because the theme of so much he wrote was about the devastating extent of the changes human technology and populations were wreaking on the earth's biological life. The Reader's Guide stated: Jeffer's greatest triumph is that now--more than seventy-five years after his radical poetic voice first sounded--his poetry retains its power to inspire and disturb.
He had a very rich background to draw upon for all his meaningful works. Not only did he write about the environment but also about lifes great questions and how man fit into it all.
For myself I was very taken with his writings about this beautiful California coastline that we have come to love and be drawn to.
His poetry is not all land, earth, struggle. He wrote some sweet poetry (The House Dog's Grave) and some loving (poetry about his wife whom he obviously was wild about.) His works inspired artists (Ansel Adams) and other writers (Steinbeck).
If you have not chanced upon him I encourage you to read about him on The Big Read site.
Along with the book I found a Reader's Guide published by The National Endowment of the Arts in collaboration with the Poetry Foundation in an effort called The Big Read. I encourage anyone who sees this to visit their site at www.NEABigRead.org. It is an amazing site filled with books of all kinds and information about the writers, their lives and books.
Poetry is not my first love because it is so hard to wrap my mind around unless I know why they were written or just happen upon a line or verse that speaks to me personally.
However, the artistic works of this man are something anyone could relate to. Even though they were written years past they speak of things people feel strongly about today. Jeffers has been called an 'early environmentalist' because the theme of so much he wrote was about the devastating extent of the changes human technology and populations were wreaking on the earth's biological life. The Reader's Guide stated: Jeffer's greatest triumph is that now--more than seventy-five years after his radical poetic voice first sounded--his poetry retains its power to inspire and disturb.
He had a very rich background to draw upon for all his meaningful works. Not only did he write about the environment but also about lifes great questions and how man fit into it all.
For myself I was very taken with his writings about this beautiful California coastline that we have come to love and be drawn to.
His poetry is not all land, earth, struggle. He wrote some sweet poetry (The House Dog's Grave) and some loving (poetry about his wife whom he obviously was wild about.) His works inspired artists (Ansel Adams) and other writers (Steinbeck).
If you have not chanced upon him I encourage you to read about him on The Big Read site.
January 22, 2010
At the end of the book, I was even more impressed than when I had begun. Honestly, I was going to give this 4 stars instead of 5, because some of the earlier poems are so-so, or have awkward moments. But he really bloomed as the years went on, despite the fact that his popularity took an opposite turn. I rarely feel the sensation that Emily Dickinson said indicates good poetry, feeling like the top of your head has been blown off. But I felt this from a number of Jeffers' poems.
Jeffers took a hard look at the realities of life, from the harshness of nature, to human cruelty--both to the world around him, as well as "man's inhumanity to man." For that I admire his work for its sheer honesty alone. But he also conveys a sense of beauty and wonder at people, nature, existence itself, through poems that are variously narrative, contemplative, and quasi-mystical.
Jeffers took a hard look at the realities of life, from the harshness of nature, to human cruelty--both to the world around him, as well as "man's inhumanity to man." For that I admire his work for its sheer honesty alone. But he also conveys a sense of beauty and wonder at people, nature, existence itself, through poems that are variously narrative, contemplative, and quasi-mystical.
April 6, 2017
I'm not aware of any political poetry more astute than Jeffers'. No poet saw and wrote as clearly of the consequences of our interdependency and the monsters our cities would become. His portraits of the natural world are rare in their clarity—without any sentimentality or the banality that frames our current discussions of nature and the "natural" world. A hard but lovely view of life, cruel and beautiful. When he thought of Mother Nature, classically schooled Jeffers, never forgot mothers such as Medea.
November 7, 2021
My favorite poet! This beat up copy of mine is well-loved and well-marked. There's nothing like Jeffers to remind you that you're small in the scheme of nature, and time.
April 11, 2023
Became a bit too obsessed writing about the horrors of war towards the end, which fair enough, but he's much better at writing about rocks and trees and birds
June 11, 2024
I bought this in a second hand bookshop cuz it had the one poem of his that I really loved when we read a bunch of them in class and was not disappointed by the rest. Really enjoyed most of them, with a few surprise additions to my favorite poems ever. The House Dog's Grave gutted me and made me miss my dog and I never not enjoy rereading Hurt Hawks :) The only poem i really disliked with a passion was the horse poem that's really a short story in disguise, and well, I can appreciate his faith and his preference of nature and god over mankind even if I don't share the former. Also politically unfortunately very relevant and dare I say timeless
March 21, 2020
Despite having walked by Tor House and known of Jeffers for some time, this is the first book I've read of his. Very enjoyable moments of transcendence through the grit of nature. Perfect for these days of isolation.
April 16, 2021
This man wrote 100 yrs ago and these poems still burn with relevance and beauty.
Be angry at the Sun is telling and contemporary. Roan Stallion is a wild story, as tall and as dark as the man himself.
The House Dog’s Grave and Apology For Bad Dreams will also exquisitely crush you.
A tidy and satisfying collection.
Be angry at the Sun is telling and contemporary. Roan Stallion is a wild story, as tall and as dark as the man himself.
The House Dog’s Grave and Apology For Bad Dreams will also exquisitely crush you.
A tidy and satisfying collection.
March 8, 2011
This is my first real Robinson Jeffers reading (aside from random class-assigned poems), and is already one of my favorite poets. He called the Big Sur region home, and perhaps that's why he resonates with me, as I have a recently acquired particular love for that stretch of mid-California coastal gorgeousness (helped in part by Jack Kerouac's Big Sur
).
His themes consistently cover nature, the sea, God (both the existence of and a lack thereof), and mankind--its hypocrisies, its created conflicts, war and excess. There is often a hopelessness in his writing, a comeuppance that mankind has long deserved and awaited, and *will* come. He finds solace and innocence in animals and birds--hawks in particular--yet also sees them as manifestations of the strength and will of mother nature.
His poetry rarely rhymes yet is often structured. Some of his poems ring out like small tidbits of thought, and you can almost see that moment where this thought bubbled within him and he jotted it out and formed it and added his sweeping wave of closure that ensures each poem has an injection of significance and timeliness. Even today, almost 50 years after his death, his analogues and critiques of war hit home. He was a watcher, an analyst of man's motivations. He knew what made people tick, and he aimed for those tickers when he wrote. As a poet should.
--- ---
Some choice quotes (I love the last one):
"The tides are in our veins ... there is in me / Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye / that watched before there was an ocean." -- "Continent's End"
"I have seen these ways of God: I know of no reason / For fire and change and torture and the old returnings. / He being sufficient might be still. I think they admit no / reason; they are the ways of my love." -- "Apology for Bad Dreams"
"Humanity / is the start of the race; I say / Humanity is the mould to break away from, the crust to / break through, the coal to break into fire, / The atom to be split." -- "Roan Stallion"
"When the ancient wisdom is / folded like a wine-stained cloth and laid up in dark- / ness. / And the old symbols forgotten, in the glory of that your / hawk's dream / Remember that the life of mankind is like the life of a / man, a flutter from darkness to darkness / Across the bright hair of a fire, so much of the ancient / Knowledge will not be annulled." -- "The Torch-Bearers' Race"
"What I see is / the enormous beauty of things, but what I attempt / Is nothing to that. I am helpless toward that." -- "An Artist"
"It is time for us to kiss the earth again, / It is time to let the leaves rain from the skies, / Let the rich life run to the roots again." -- "Return"
"It is easy to know the beauty of inhuman things, sea, / storm and mountain; it is their soul and their / meaning. / Humanity has its lesser beauty, impure and painful; we / have to harden our hearts to bear it." -- "The World's Wonders"
"If God has been good enough to give you a poet / Then listen to him." -- "Let Them Alone"
).His themes consistently cover nature, the sea, God (both the existence of and a lack thereof), and mankind--its hypocrisies, its created conflicts, war and excess. There is often a hopelessness in his writing, a comeuppance that mankind has long deserved and awaited, and *will* come. He finds solace and innocence in animals and birds--hawks in particular--yet also sees them as manifestations of the strength and will of mother nature.
His poetry rarely rhymes yet is often structured. Some of his poems ring out like small tidbits of thought, and you can almost see that moment where this thought bubbled within him and he jotted it out and formed it and added his sweeping wave of closure that ensures each poem has an injection of significance and timeliness. Even today, almost 50 years after his death, his analogues and critiques of war hit home. He was a watcher, an analyst of man's motivations. He knew what made people tick, and he aimed for those tickers when he wrote. As a poet should.
--- ---
Some choice quotes (I love the last one):
"The tides are in our veins ... there is in me / Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye / that watched before there was an ocean." -- "Continent's End"
"I have seen these ways of God: I know of no reason / For fire and change and torture and the old returnings. / He being sufficient might be still. I think they admit no / reason; they are the ways of my love." -- "Apology for Bad Dreams"
"Humanity / is the start of the race; I say / Humanity is the mould to break away from, the crust to / break through, the coal to break into fire, / The atom to be split." -- "Roan Stallion"
"When the ancient wisdom is / folded like a wine-stained cloth and laid up in dark- / ness. / And the old symbols forgotten, in the glory of that your / hawk's dream / Remember that the life of mankind is like the life of a / man, a flutter from darkness to darkness / Across the bright hair of a fire, so much of the ancient / Knowledge will not be annulled." -- "The Torch-Bearers' Race"
"What I see is / the enormous beauty of things, but what I attempt / Is nothing to that. I am helpless toward that." -- "An Artist"
"It is time for us to kiss the earth again, / It is time to let the leaves rain from the skies, / Let the rich life run to the roots again." -- "Return"
"It is easy to know the beauty of inhuman things, sea, / storm and mountain; it is their soul and their / meaning. / Humanity has its lesser beauty, impure and painful; we / have to harden our hearts to bear it." -- "The World's Wonders"
"If God has been good enough to give you a poet / Then listen to him." -- "Let Them Alone"
April 24, 2017
Immensely popular early in his poetic career, Robinson Jeffers suffered a harsh critical backlash later in life, particularly following his harsh stances on U.S. foreign policy during WWII and the Korean War. Though he never regained the heights of his earlier status, contemporary poetry readers and scholars have begun to re-investigate his work (the Georgia Review, for example, did a good feature on Jeffers in a 2016 issue), resulting in somewhat of a recent renaissance in interest in Jeffers' poetry.
I recently picked up a used copy of this book. Having read through it now, I understand why he has been such a polarizing figure. Undeniably talented, Jeffers penned some real gems of poems. However, he also exuded a somewhat pricklish outlook that could be extremely off-putting at times. I found this outlook went well beyond a simple anti-war stance and could be more accurately described as anti-human, honestly. Indeed, he writes in one of his poems "I would rather / Be a worm in a wild apple than a son of man," and this sentiment was by no means isolated. Words such as didactic, judgemental, and polemical all come to mind when reading some of Jeffers' poems. A poet fitting such a description would not typically be to the taste of readers from the past several decades.
And yet, I think it's wise that the poetry community has mellowed its stance on Jeffers in recent years. Many of his poems - "The Beauty of Things," "The Old Stone-Mason," "Hurt Hawks," to name a few - can easily stand with other classics from the early twentieth century. Furthermore, often broadly considered a nature poet, Jeffers provides a unique point of view very different from others in that genre such as Frost. Though I found reading through this selection problematic at times, overall, I found it very rewarding. I was impressed with my first selection to Jeffers and actually wouldn't mind reading a larger selection with more diverse offerings.
I recently picked up a used copy of this book. Having read through it now, I understand why he has been such a polarizing figure. Undeniably talented, Jeffers penned some real gems of poems. However, he also exuded a somewhat pricklish outlook that could be extremely off-putting at times. I found this outlook went well beyond a simple anti-war stance and could be more accurately described as anti-human, honestly. Indeed, he writes in one of his poems "I would rather / Be a worm in a wild apple than a son of man," and this sentiment was by no means isolated. Words such as didactic, judgemental, and polemical all come to mind when reading some of Jeffers' poems. A poet fitting such a description would not typically be to the taste of readers from the past several decades.
And yet, I think it's wise that the poetry community has mellowed its stance on Jeffers in recent years. Many of his poems - "The Beauty of Things," "The Old Stone-Mason," "Hurt Hawks," to name a few - can easily stand with other classics from the early twentieth century. Furthermore, often broadly considered a nature poet, Jeffers provides a unique point of view very different from others in that genre such as Frost. Though I found reading through this selection problematic at times, overall, I found it very rewarding. I was impressed with my first selection to Jeffers and actually wouldn't mind reading a larger selection with more diverse offerings.
July 29, 2008
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 mass, pops and sighs out, and the
mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots
to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and deca-
dence; and home to the mother.
You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stub-
bornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains:
shine, perishing republic.
But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thick-
ening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster's feet there
are left the mountains.
And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant,
insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught--they say--
God, when he walked on earth.
Robinson Jeffers
May 25, 2010
I have never felt so much radical ambivalance toward a poet. If you want to read poems that are the poetic equivalant of being hit with rocks, read this dude. He is seriously amazing. And hates God. And does a better job of articulating and defending the position of the rational, "manly" atheist than anyone I've ever come across, except for maybe Camus and/or professor Lewis (the "manly" bit is his quote, read about it in Mere Christianity).
Unapologetic, brave, and utterly hopeless.
"Surely one always knew that cultures decay, and that life's end is death." BLAM
Unapologetic, brave, and utterly hopeless.
"Surely one always knew that cultures decay, and that life's end is death." BLAM
August 25, 2016
“Selected Poems”
By Robinson Jeffers
May 24, 2014
Jeffers has a unique way of telling a story, usually dramatic, by way of a poem. His style is sharp and vivid and puts the reader into an environment that he chooses. Not only are his writings radical but invigorating as well for the reader. His descriptions of stoic crags, rocks and the shoreline of the Pacific were not only poignant but refreshing as well as on the spot. I enjoyed Stone Cutters, The Eye, Cassandra and so many more. To any poet or poetry lover this cat has the stones to move your romantic mountain.
By Robinson Jeffers
May 24, 2014
Jeffers has a unique way of telling a story, usually dramatic, by way of a poem. His style is sharp and vivid and puts the reader into an environment that he chooses. Not only are his writings radical but invigorating as well for the reader. His descriptions of stoic crags, rocks and the shoreline of the Pacific were not only poignant but refreshing as well as on the spot. I enjoyed Stone Cutters, The Eye, Cassandra and so many more. To any poet or poetry lover this cat has the stones to move your romantic mountain.
April 20, 2020
Our current coronavirus pandemic offers perhaps the ideal time to re-read the poetry of Robinson Jeffers, that most craggy of poets. His work is suffused and constantly comforted by sea-worn rock. True, he can be direly didactic, doom-ridden even, but the word I would use overall is "bracing." And one of a kind in voice and temperament. I love his rolling rhythms, especially the double adjectives - "blood-boltered Scotland," "suspicion-agonized eye" ("Iona: The Graves of the Kings"). Not a great poet, but a worthwhile one.
September 4, 2016
Took me awhile to get through this one. I loved all the sea imagery and the wildness in many of these poems. "The House Dog's Grave" is the only poem to have ever made me cry. Jeffers' misanthropy and pessimism was of such a nature that it is more comforting than off-putting for me. There are a couple of poems in this collection that I will undoubtedly return to again and again.
January 22, 2017
There is so much here to recommend - the description of nature, his turns of phase - but there is a baseline nihilism, which Jeffers himself referred to as inhumanism that I just can't wholly embrace. However, Robinson Jeffers deserves to be read and doing it in selected fashion is probably the right way to do it.
February 9, 2008
I picked this up on ebay before Christmas. I've always loved Jeffers poems. "Hurt Hawks" is another one of those poems that may rank among the best work ever. This is a great representative collectionof his work, glad I stumbled across it.
September 17, 2014
A really good way to get to know shorter poems of Robinson Jeffers. I hand this out to people who want to know why he's my favorite poet. The shorter poems are a pathway into his long narrative poems.
November 22, 2007
Read the poem Hurt Hawks.
August 30, 2008
This collection features "Roan Stallion", one of Jeffers' best works. I don't know how to describe his poetry but its very powerful. Put down that stupid Patti Smith collection and read a real poet.
April 11, 2023
"If time is only another dimension, then all that dies
Remains alive; not annulled, but removed
Out of our sight. Una is still alive.
A few years back we are making love, greedy as hawks,
A boy and a married girl. A few years back
We are still young, strong-shouldered, joyfully laboring
To make our house. Then she, in the wide sea-window,
Endlessly enduring but not very patient,
Teaches our sons to read. She is still there,
Her beautiful pale face, heavy hair, great eyes
Bent to the book. And a few years back
We sit with our grown sons in the pitching motor-boat
Off Horn Head in Donegal, watching the sea-parrots
Tumble like clowns along the thousand-foot cliff, and the gannets
like falling stars
Hawk at the sea: her great blue eyes are brimmed
With the wild beauty. Or we walk in Orkney,
Under the mystery of huge stones that stand there,
Raised high in the world's dawn by unknown men to forgotten
gods,
And see dimly through the deep northern dusk
A great skein of wild swans drop from the cloud
To the gray lake. She weeps a little for joy of beauty. Only the
homecoming
To our loved rock over the gray and ageless Pacific
Makes her such joy.
It is possible that all these conditions of us
Are fixed points on the returning orbit of time and exist eternally...
It is no good. Una has died, and I
Am left waiting for death, like a leafless tree
Waiting for the roots to rot and the trunk to fall.
I never thought you would leave me, dear love.
I knew you would die some time, I should die first -
But you have died. It is quite natural:
Because you loved life you must die first, and I
Who never cared much to live on. Life is cheap, these days;
We have to compete with Asia, we are cheap as dust,
And death is cheap, but not hers. It is a common thing:
We die, we cease to exist, and our dear lovers
Fufil themselves with sorrow and drunkenness, the quart at
midnight
And the cups in the morning - or they go seeking
A second love: but you and I are at least
Not ridiculous.
September again. The gray grass, the gray sea,
The ink-black trees with white-bellied night-herons in them,
Brawling on the boughs at dusk, barking like dogs -
And the awful loss. It is a year. She has died: and I
Have lived for a long year on soft rotten emotions,
Vain longing and drunken pity, grief and gray ashes -
Oh child of God!
It is not that I am lonely for you. I am lonely:
I am mutilated, for you were part of me:
But men endure that. I am growing old and my love is gone:
No doubt I can live without you, bitterly and well.
That's not the cry. My torment is memory
My grief to have seen the banner and beauty of you brave life
Dragged in dust down the dim road of death. To have seen
you defeated,
You who never despaired, passing through weakness
And pain -
to nothing. It is usual, I believe. I stood by; I believe
I never failed you. The contemptible thought -
Whether I failed or not! I am not the one.
I was not dying. Is death bitter, my dearest? It is nothing.
It is a silence. But dying can be bitter.
In this black year
I have thought often of Hungerfield, the man at Horse Creek,
Who fought with Death - bodily, said the witnesses, throat for
throat,
Fury against fury in the dark -
And conquered him. If I had the courage and the hope -
Or the pure rage -
I should be now Death's captive, no doubt, not conqueror.
I should be with my dearest, in the hollow darkness
Where nothing hurts.
I should not remember
Your silver-backed hand-mirror you asked me for,
And sat up in bed to gaze in it, to see your face
A little changed. You were still beautiful,
But not - as you'd been - a falcon. You said nothing; you sighed
and laid down the glass; and I
Made a dog smile over a tearing heart, Saying that you looked well."
Hungerfield (1954), Robinson Jeffers
Remains alive; not annulled, but removed
Out of our sight. Una is still alive.
A few years back we are making love, greedy as hawks,
A boy and a married girl. A few years back
We are still young, strong-shouldered, joyfully laboring
To make our house. Then she, in the wide sea-window,
Endlessly enduring but not very patient,
Teaches our sons to read. She is still there,
Her beautiful pale face, heavy hair, great eyes
Bent to the book. And a few years back
We sit with our grown sons in the pitching motor-boat
Off Horn Head in Donegal, watching the sea-parrots
Tumble like clowns along the thousand-foot cliff, and the gannets
like falling stars
Hawk at the sea: her great blue eyes are brimmed
With the wild beauty. Or we walk in Orkney,
Under the mystery of huge stones that stand there,
Raised high in the world's dawn by unknown men to forgotten
gods,
And see dimly through the deep northern dusk
A great skein of wild swans drop from the cloud
To the gray lake. She weeps a little for joy of beauty. Only the
homecoming
To our loved rock over the gray and ageless Pacific
Makes her such joy.
It is possible that all these conditions of us
Are fixed points on the returning orbit of time and exist eternally...
It is no good. Una has died, and I
Am left waiting for death, like a leafless tree
Waiting for the roots to rot and the trunk to fall.
I never thought you would leave me, dear love.
I knew you would die some time, I should die first -
But you have died. It is quite natural:
Because you loved life you must die first, and I
Who never cared much to live on. Life is cheap, these days;
We have to compete with Asia, we are cheap as dust,
And death is cheap, but not hers. It is a common thing:
We die, we cease to exist, and our dear lovers
Fufil themselves with sorrow and drunkenness, the quart at
midnight
And the cups in the morning - or they go seeking
A second love: but you and I are at least
Not ridiculous.
September again. The gray grass, the gray sea,
The ink-black trees with white-bellied night-herons in them,
Brawling on the boughs at dusk, barking like dogs -
And the awful loss. It is a year. She has died: and I
Have lived for a long year on soft rotten emotions,
Vain longing and drunken pity, grief and gray ashes -
Oh child of God!
It is not that I am lonely for you. I am lonely:
I am mutilated, for you were part of me:
But men endure that. I am growing old and my love is gone:
No doubt I can live without you, bitterly and well.
That's not the cry. My torment is memory
My grief to have seen the banner and beauty of you brave life
Dragged in dust down the dim road of death. To have seen
you defeated,
You who never despaired, passing through weakness
And pain -
to nothing. It is usual, I believe. I stood by; I believe
I never failed you. The contemptible thought -
Whether I failed or not! I am not the one.
I was not dying. Is death bitter, my dearest? It is nothing.
It is a silence. But dying can be bitter.
In this black year
I have thought often of Hungerfield, the man at Horse Creek,
Who fought with Death - bodily, said the witnesses, throat for
throat,
Fury against fury in the dark -
And conquered him. If I had the courage and the hope -
Or the pure rage -
I should be now Death's captive, no doubt, not conqueror.
I should be with my dearest, in the hollow darkness
Where nothing hurts.
I should not remember
Your silver-backed hand-mirror you asked me for,
And sat up in bed to gaze in it, to see your face
A little changed. You were still beautiful,
But not - as you'd been - a falcon. You said nothing; you sighed
and laid down the glass; and I
Made a dog smile over a tearing heart, Saying that you looked well."
Hungerfield (1954), Robinson Jeffers
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