"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.

I was the stream, and the I stag drinking.
I was the stars, wandering alone, boiling with light, and I was the darkness outside the stars, I included them, they were 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,
to be all things in all time, beyond hours and ages
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 second silver murmur that rings in love's voice, I and my love are one,
No desire but fulfilled, no passion but
peace,
the pure flame and the white..."


- Robinson Jeffers, "The Tower Beyond Tragedy"

Not Man Apart

Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers