Robinson Jeffers, two poems

Soliloquy

August and laurelled have been content to speak for an
      age, and the ages that follow
Respect them for that pious fidelity;
But you have disfeatured time for timelessness.
They had heroes for companions, beautiful youths to
      dream of, rose-marble-fingered
Women shed light down the great lines;
But you have invoked the slime in the skull,
The lymph in the vessels. They have shown men Gods
      like racial dreams, the woman's desire,
The man's fear, the hawk-faced prophet's; but nothing
Human seems happy at the feet of yours.
Therefore though not forgotten, not loved, in gray old
      years in the evening leaning
Over the gray stones of the tower-top,
You shall be called heartless and blind;
And watch new time answer old thought, not a face
      strange nor a pain astonishing;
But you living be laired in the rock
That sheds pleasure and pain like hailstones.




The Bed by the Window

I chose the bed downstairs by the sea-window for a good
      death-bed
When we build the house; it is ready waiting,
Unused unless by some guest in a twelvemonth, who
      hardly suspects
Its latter purpose. I often regard it,
With neither dislike nor desire; rather with both, so
      equalled
That they kill each other and a crystalline interest
Remains alone. We are safe to finish what we have to
      finish;
And then it will sound rather like music
When the patient daemon behind the screen of sea-rock
      and sky
Thumps with his staff, and calls thrice: "Come, Jeffers."