Reading Notes W8: Jeffers, Part B

To the Stone Cutters

For man will be blotted out, the blind earth will die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.

The Purse-Seine

I cannot tell you
How beautiful the scene is, and a little terrible, then, when the crowded fish
Know they are caught, and wildly beat from one wall to the other of their closing destiny the phosphorescent
Water to a pool of flame, each beautiful slender body sheeted with flame, like a live rocket
A comet's tail wake of clear yellow flame; while outside the narrowing
Floats and cordage of the net sea-lions come up to watch, sighing in he dark; the vast walls of night
Stand erect to the stars.

Jeffers, Robinson, "The Stone Cutters," pp. 409.
Jeffers, Robinson, "The Purse- Seine," pp. 411-412.