Hope Is Not For The Wise Poem by Robinson Jeffers

Hope Is Not For The Wise

Rating: 2.9


Hope is not for the wise, fear is for fools;
Change and the world, we think, are racing to a fall,
Open-eyed and helpless, in every newscast that is the news:
The time's events would seem mere chaos but all
Drift the one deadly direction. But this is only
The August thunder of the age, not the November.
Wise men hope nothing, the wise are naturally lonely
And think November as good as April, the wise remember
That Caesar and even final Augustulus had heirs,
And men lived on; rich unplanned life on earth
After the foreign wars and the civil wars, the border wars
And the barbarians: music and religion, honor and mirth
Renewed life's lost enchantments. But if life even
Had perished utterly, Oh perfect loveliness of earth and heaven.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Tom Clark 22 March 2023

No poet better captures the impending end of our civilization through climate catastrophe than the stoic, laconic Jeffers.

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Fabrizio Frosini 10 December 2015

'Hope is not for the wise, fear is for fools' in Italian: ''La speranza non tocca il saggio, la paura è degli sciocchi''

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Robinson Jeffers

Robinson Jeffers

Allegheny, Pennsylvania
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