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Robinson Jeffers: Night
The ebb slips from the rock,
the sunken Tide-rocks lift streaming shoulders
Out of the slack, the slow west
Sombering its torch; a ship’s light
Shows faintly, far out,
Over the weight of the prone ocean
On the low cloud.
Over the dark mountain, over the dark pinewood,
Down the long dark valley along the shrunken river,
Returns the splendor without rays, the shining of shadow,
Peace-bringer, the matrix of all shining and quieter of shining.
Where the shore widens on the bay she opens dark wings
And the ocean accepts her glory. O soul worshipful of her
You like the ocean have grave depths where she dwells always,
And the film of waves above that takes the sun takes also
Her, with more love. The sun-lovers have a blond favorite,
A father of lights and noises, wars, weeping and laughter,
Hot labor, lust and delight and the other blemishes. Quietness
Flows from her deeper fountain; and he will die; and she is
immortal.
Far off from here the slender
Flocks of the mountain forest
Move among stems like towers
Of the old redwoods to the stream,
No twig crackling; dip shy
Wild muzzles into the mountain water
Among the dark ferns.
O passionately at peace you being secure will pardon
The blasphemies of glowworms, the lamp in my tower, the
fretfulness
Of cities, the cressets of the planets, the pride of the stars.
This August night in a rift of cloud Antares reddens,
The great one, the ancient torch, a lord among lost children,
The earth’s orbit doubled would not girdle his greatness, one fire
Globed, out of grasp of the mind enormous; but to you O Night
What? Not a spark? What flicker of a spark in the faint far
glimmer
Of a lost fire dying in the desert, dim coals of a sand-pit the
Bedouins
Wandered from at dawn . . . Ah singing prayer to what gulfs
tempted
Suddenly are you more lost? To us the near-hand mountain
Be a measure of height, the tide-worn cliff at the sea-gate a
measure of continuance.
The tide, moving the night’s
Vastness with lonely voices,
Turns, the deep dark-shining
Pacific leans on the land,
Feeling his cold strength
To the outmost margins: you Night will resume
The stars in your time.
O passionately at peace when will that tide draw shoreward?
Truly the spouting fountains of light, Antares, Arcturus,
Tire of their flow, they sing one song but they think silence.
The striding winter giant Orion shines, and dreams darkness.
And life, the flicker of men and moths and the wolf on the hill,
Though furious for continuance, passionately feeding, passionately
Remaking itself upon its mates, remembers deep inward
The calm mother, the quietness of the womb and the egg,
The primal and the latter silences: dear Night it is memory
Prophesies, prophecy that remembers, the charm of the dark.
And I and my people, we are willing to love the four-score years
Heartily; but as a sailor loves the sea, when the helm is for harbor.
Have men’s minds changed,
Or the rock hidden in the deep of the waters of the soul
Broken the surface? A few centuries
Gone by, was none dared not to people
The darkness beyond the stars with harps and habitations.
But now, dear is the truth. Life is grown sweeter and lonelier,
And death is no evil.
~~~~
Public domain.
Source: Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers- Random House – 1938
Robinson Jeffers (1887 – 1962) was an American poet known for his work about the central California coast. He is considered an icon of the environmental movement. Influential and controversial, Jeffers believed that transcending conflict required human concerns to be de-emphasized in favor of the boundless whole. This led him to oppose U.S. participation in World War II, a stance that was controversial after the U.S. entered the war.
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I once won the Robinson Jeffers/Tor House prize, and while down in Carmel for the celebratory reading a docent gave me a tour of the buildings of Tor House, and recited the poems Jeffers was writing while building each part of the place. At least 20 poems rolled off his tongue, it was so fabulous.But now, dear is the truth. Life is grown sweeter and lonelier…
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’But now, dear is the truth”. Molly, I’ve been reading your new novel-in-verse WALKING WHEEL. Oh my, what an incredible book. How were you able to write a sequence of poems that read like a novel? You are brilliant.
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Thank you so much! And really, I have no idea… It happened over 20 years. xo
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Thank you for offering us a piece of Jeffers’ great poetry today.
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One of my faves.
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the slender
flocks of the mountain forest…
will pardon
The blasphemies of glowworms…
(among all the other words and images of Jeffers’ brilliantly lit Night)
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Yes, it is a great poem in its breadth of vision and beauty of language.
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Just for these lines:
“Over the dark mountain, over the dark pinewood,
Down the long dark valley along the shrunken river,
Returns the splendor without rays, the shining of shadow,
Peace-bringer, the matrix of all shining and quieter of shining.”
and the two last lines of this superb poem–&, as Jim says, everything before and after: awe, pure awe for this symphony of images and language!
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Oh yes. Just reading them again makes my heart sing.
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Yes. Awe.
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…the slender
Flocks of the mountain forest...
will pardon
The blasphemies of glowworms,…
And everything before and after those words in the brilliantly dark Night.
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And I am there at the ancient Inn by sea and redwoods when I stayed in a tiny room in Big Sur and could feel the past poets as I made my way to Tassajara.
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“Truly the spouting fountains of light, Antares, Arcturus, Tire of their flow, they sing one song but they think silence.”
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I love this poem. I was just reading it yesterday!
Sent from my iPhone
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A great poet chastised and disgraced for standing by his conscience…
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He, this poem is everything. I won’t litter the day with words—not another moment—he’s said everything.
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Yes. Thank you.
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In this dystopian moment, Jeffers work is badly needed. I love this poem—thank you for posting it.
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I agree! Jeffers anti-war pro-nature stand is the vision we need.
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