Robinson Jeffers

The storm-dances of gulls, the barking game of seals,
Over and under the ocean…Divinely superfluous
Rules the games, presides over destinies, makes trees
And hills tower, waves fall

The deer were bounding like blown
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 was beautiful, the

The extraordinary patience of things
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses-How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses...

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        enormous scene; the enormous games

The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder,
The wing trails like a banner in defeat,
No more to use the sky forever but live with
And pain a few days: cat nor

Sports and gallantries, the stage, the arts, the antics of dancers,
The exuberant voices of music,
Have charm for children but lack nobility; it is bitter
That makes beauty; the

The old woman sits on a bench before the door and
With her meagre pale demoralized daughter
Once when I passed I found her alone, laughing in the
And saying that when she was first

Seventy years ago my mother labored to bear me,
A twelve-pound baby with a big head,
Her first, it was plain torture
Finally they used the

The mad girl with the staring eyes and long white
Hooked in the stones of the wall,
The storm-wrack hair and screeching mouth: does it matter,
Cassandra,

Joy is a trick in the air; pleasure is merely contemptible, the
Carrot the ass follows to market or precipice;
But limitary pain — the rock under the tower and the hewn
That takes thunder at the head of the turret-Terrible and real...

They burned lime on the hill and dropped it down     here in an iron
On a long cable; here the ships warped
And took their loads from the engine, the water     is deep to the cliff
The

Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel, formerly used to kill men, but
In the sense of a symbol
The sword: that is: the storms and counter-storms of general destruc...