Robinson Jeffers
Robinson Jeffers
John Robinson Jefferswas an American poet, known for his work about the central California coast. Much of Jeffers' poetry was written in narrative and epic form, but he is also known for his shorter verse and is considered an icon of the environmental movement. Influential and highly regarded in some circles, despite or because of his philosophy of "inhumanism," Jeffers believed that transcending conflict required human concerns to be de-emphasized in favor of the boundless whole. This led him to...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth10 January 1887
CityPittsburgh, PA
CountryUnited States of America
apart appears beauty days despair divine drown earth greatest hand integrity life love man organic pitiful share stars ugly wholeness
A severed hand Is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars and his history... for contemplation or in fact... Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness, the greatest beauty is Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe. Love that, not man Apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions, or drown in despair when his days darken.
god stars night
God is a lion that comes in the night. God is a hawk gliding among the stars-- If all the stars and the earth, and the living flesh of the night that flows in between them, and whatever is beyond them Were that one bird. He has a bloody beak and harsh talons, he pounces and tears.
beauty beautiful stars
...[K]now that however ugly the parts appear the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand Is an ugly thing, and man dissevered from the earth and stars and his history... for contemplation or in fact... Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness, the greatest beauty is Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe....
stars children ocean
The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is your child, but there is in me Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that watched before there was an ocean.
love beautiful stars
I believe that the universe is one being, all its parts are different expressions of the same energy... parts of one organic whole.... (This is physics, I believe, as well as religion.) The parts change and pass, or die, people and races and rocks and stars; none of them seems to me important in itself, but only the whole. This whole is in all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to love it, and to think of it as divine.
lonely stars lying
The world's in a bad way, my man, And bound to be worse before it mends; Better lie up in the mountain here Four or five centuries, While the stars go over the lonely ocean.
business express holy intricate noble poetry sole understand
To feel greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the naturalBeauty, is the sole business of poetry.The rest's diversion: those holy or noble sentiments, the intricate ideas,The love, lust, longing: reasons, but not the reason.
achieved beauty bones build catch darkness hatch heavens hunter last nest prey pure swan white wild
Shiva... is the only hunter that will ever catch the wild swan;The prey she will take last is the wild white swan of the beauty of things.Then she will be alone, pure destruction, achieved and supreme,Empty darkness under the death-tent wings.She will build a nest of the swan's bones and hatch a new brood,Hang new heavens with new birds, all be renewed.
evolution eyes fear fine fleet great hunger limbs tooth
What but the wolf's tooth whittled so fine The fleet limbs of the antelope?What but fear winged the birds, and hunger Jewelled with such eyes the great goshawk's head?
agony animal food great hates insanity instantly interior itself love mankind mind parts persons powerful private search seeks success tension tormented tortured truth turned twist until wants
Why does insanity always twist the great answers? Because only tormented persons want truth.Man is an animal like other animals, wants food and success and women, not truth. Only if the mind Tortured by some interior tension has despaired of happiness: then it hates its life-cage and seeks further, And finds, if it is powerful enough. But instantly the private agony that made the search Muddles the finding. Then search for truth is foredoomed and frustrate? Only stained fragments? Until the mind has turned its love from itself and man, from parts to the whole.
cold deep feeling land margins pacific strength
The deep dark-shining Pacific leans on the land Feeling his cold strength To the outmost margins
capacities corruption good man mankind nature needs peace progress ten thousand until
It is good for man To try all changes, progress and corruption, powers, peace and anguish, not to go down the dinosaur's way Until all his capacities have been explored: and it is good for him To know that his needs and nature are no more changed, in fact, in ten thousand years than the beaks of eagles.
flowing noble
Look how noble the world is, the lonely-flowing waters, the secret-keeping stones, the flowing sky.
race break-through fire
Humanity is the start of the race; I say Humanity is the mould to break away from, the crust to break through, the coal to break into fire, The atom to be split.