Robinson Jeffers
Fire On The Hills
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 were caught. Beauty is not always lovely; the fire
End Of The World
When I was young in school in Switzerland, about the time of the Boer War, We used to take it for known that the human race Would last the earth out, not dying till
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 and playground, this helpless Cataract for power; it lies behind us at heel All
Meditation On Saviors
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 net nearer than the skin, a little troublesome, a
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 in dreamy waters, Peace is the ashes of that fire, The
On Building With Stone
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 than to cut Passions in verse for a sick
The Excesses Of God
Is it not by his high superfluousness we know Our God? For to be equal a need Is natural, animal, mineral: but to fling Rainbows over the rain And beauty above the moon, and
The Great Explosion
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 will contract, the immense navies of stars and galaxies,
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 destinies, makes trees grow And hills tower, waves fall. The incredible beauty
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 cataract crossed the path, flinging itself Over tree roots and rocks, shaking the jeweled fern-fronds,
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
Tor House
If you should look for this place after a handful of lifetimes: Perhaps of my planted forest a few May stand yet, dark-leaved Australians or the coast cypress, haggard With storm-drift; but fire and
Carmel Point
The extraordinary patience of things! This beautiful place defaced with a crop of surburban houses- How beautiful when we first beheld it, Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs; No intrusion
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 letters Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as
We Are Those People
I have abhorred the wars and despised the liars, laughed at the frightened And forecast victory; never one moment’s doubt. But now not far, over the backs of some crawling years, the next Great