Robinson Jeffers Poems

When I was young in school in Switzerland, about the time of the Boer War,
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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,
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At East Lulworth the dead were friendly and pitiful, I saw them
peek from their ancient earthworks on the coast hills
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Friendship, when a friend meant a helping sword,
Faithfulness, when power and life were its fruits, hatred, when the hated
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The old pagan burials, uninscribed rock,
Secret-keeping mounds,
Have shed the feeble delusions that built them,
They stand inhumanly
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I.

Here is the skull of a man: a man’s thoughts and emotions
Have moved under the thin bone vault like clouds
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Farther up the gorge the sea's voice fainted and ceased.
We heard a new noise far away ahead of us, vague and metallic,
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Like mourning women veiled to the feet
Tall slender rainstorms walk slowly against gray cloud along the
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Is it so hard for men to stand by themselves,
They must hang on Marx or Christ, or mere Progress?
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I. Reference to a Passage in Plutarch's Life of Sulla

The people buying and selling, consuming pleasures, talking in the archways,
Were all suddenly struck quiet
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