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 remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.
You making haste, haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic.
But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster's feet there are left the mountains.
And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant, insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught -- they say -- God, when he walked on earth.
-- Robinson Jeffers
Posted by Vanderleun at August 29, 2014 2:10 PM
Jeffers is among my favorite poets, by favorite being Yeats.
Posted by: Bob Sykes at January 26, 2009 5:33 AMI keep hoping . . .
but not much.
On a pro-active note:
Anthony at WUWT just posted that he is looking for someone in Key West to check out a surface station.
http://www.surfacestations.org/
Posted by: Cathy at January 26, 2009 1:31 PMHow wonderful it is that someone (other than myself) still reads and appreciates Robinson Jeffers!
Posted by: Francis W. Porretto at January 26, 2009 2:15 PMVanderleun,
Find your own poems, man! We've got an unlikely synchronicity going on:
http://arspsychiatrica.blogspot.com/20009/01/sense-of-ending.html
(Oh well, Jeffers would probably find us both to be vulgar in our own ways).
Posted by: Novalis at January 27, 2009 7:23 AMI never was much of a Jeffers fan until I toured his Tor House in Carmel...highly recommended.
Posted by: ken at January 27, 2009 3:27 PMI have loved Jeffers poetry since my disaffected teens. He was without doubt a commie, and even though I am one no longer, the poems still resound.
Posted by: teresa at January 27, 2009 7:11 PMDear Cathy, thank you for remembering. A soulmate in the ether!
Jeffers has this nagging quality. You keep thinking, Do I really understand him?
I believe Jeffers referred to himself as an anti-humanist. Certainly, that's the gist of his poems. Communism doesn't seem to fit him. I would not be surprised if some environmentalists embraced him. Not the watermelons, the paleoliths.
Also, Jeffers himself built at least some of the Tor House.
Posted by: bob sykes at April 23, 2012 3:12 AM
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