Robinson Jeffers




from The Tower Beyond Tragedy

ORESTES:                                                                 I have      
      seen the dreams of the people and not dreamed them.
As for me, I have slain my mother.                                                               
                                                     And the gate's open,      
      the gray boils over the mountain, I have greater
Kindred than dwell under a roof. Didn't I say this would be dark      
      to you? I have cut the meshes
And fly like a freed falcon. To-night, lying on the hillside, sick      
      with those visions, I remembered
The knife in the stalk of my humanity; I drew and it broke;      
      I entered the life of the brown forest
And the great life of the ancient peaks, the patience of stone,      
      I felt the changes in the veins
In the throat of the mountain, a grain in many centuries, we have      
      our own time, not yours; and I was the stream
Draining the mountain wood; and I the stag drinking; and I was      
      the stars,
Boiling with light, wandering alone, each one the lord of his own      
      summit; and I was the darkness
Outside the stars, I included them, they were a part of me. I was      
      mankind also, a moving lichen
On the cheek of the round stone . . . they have not made words      
      for it, to go behind things, beyond hours and ages,
And be all things in all time, in their returns and passages, in the      
      motionless and timeless center,
In the white of the fire . . . how can I express the excellence      
      I have found, that has no color but clearness;
No honey but ecstasy; nothing wrought nor remembered; no      
      undertone nor silver second murmur
That rings in love's voice, I and my loved are one; no desire but      
      fulfilled; no passion but peace,
The pure flame and the white, fierier than any passion; no time      
      but spheral eternity: Electra,
Was that your name before this life dawned -