A sample of Robinson Jeffers

Below I've pasted not one, but three poems of Robinson Jeffers. I thought that one would be too restrictive and unrepresentative of his body of work, which is rather large and varied. I've intentionally selected poems that seem to speak to or illustrate many of the issues/ideas that we've been talking about in class. In some cases, the format is a bit off e.g., the last two poems don't capture the proper indentations.

Here is a stanza from "Continent's End", which brings to mind Emerson's "eye" we talked about in class last week:

The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is your
child, but there is in me
Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that
watched before there was an ocean.


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, men, women, and children, gath-
  ering shellfish,
Swarmed with voices of gulls the sea-breach.
At twilight they went off together, the verge was left vacant, an
  evening heron
Bent broad wings over the black ebb,
And left me wondering why a lone bird was dearer to me than many
  people.
Well: rare is dear: but also I suppose
Well reconciled with the world but not with our own natures we
grudge to see them
Reflected on the world for a mirror.

Sign Post

Civilized, crying: how to be human again; this will tell you how. Turn outward, love things, not men, turn right away from hu- manity, Let that doll lie. Consider if you like how the lilies grow, Lean on the silent rock until you feel its divinity Make your veins cold; look at the silent stars, let your eyes Climb the great ladder out of the pit of yourself and man. Things are so beautiful, your love will follow your eyes; Things are the God; you will love God and not in vain, For what we love, we grow to it, we share its nature. At length You will look back along the star's rays and see that even The poor doll humanity has a place under heaven. Its qualities repair their mosaic around you, the chips of strength And sickness; but now you are free, even to be human, But born of the rock and the air, not of a woman. Gray Weather It is true that, older than mand and ages to outlast him, the Pacific surf Still cheerfully pounds the worn granite drum; But there's no storm; and the birds are still, no song; no kind of excess; Nothing that shines, nothing is dark; There is neither joy nor grief nor a person, the sun's tooth sheathed in cloud, And life has no more desires than a stone. The stormy conditions of time and change are all abrogated, the essential Violences of survival, pleasure, Love, wrath and pain, and the curious desire of knowing, all per- fectly suspended. In the cloudy light, in the timeless quietness, One explores deeper than the nerves or heart of nature, the womb or soul, To the bone, the careless white bone, the excellence.