Rock and Hawk

By Robinson Jeffers 1887–1962 Robinson Jeffers

Here is a symbol in which

Many high tragic thoughts

Watch their own eyes.

This gray rock, standing tall

On the headland, where the sea-wind

Lets no tree grow,

Earthquake-proved, and signatured

By ages of storms: on its peak

A falcon has perched.

I think, here is your emblem

To hang in the future sky;

Not the cross, not the hive,

But this; bright power, dark peace;

Fierce consciousness joined with final

Disinterestedness;

Life with calm death; the falcon’s

Realist eyes and act

Married to the massive

Mysticism of stone,

Which failure cannot cast down

Nor success make proud.

Robinson Jeffers, “Rock and Hawk” from The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, edited by Tim Hunt. Copyright (c) by the Jeffers Literary Properties. With the permission of Stanford University Press, www.sup.org.

Source: The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers (Stanford University Press, 2001)

Biography

Robinson Jeffers was born in 1887 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The son of Presbyterian minister and Biblical scholar, Dr. William Hamilton Jeffers, as a boy Jeffers was thoroughly trained in the Bible and classical languages. The Jeffers family frequently traveled to Europe, and Robinson attended boarding schools in Germany and Switzerland. In 1902, Jeffers enrolled in Western University of Pennsylvania; when his family moved to . . .

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