“Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you fore defeated Challengers of oblivion Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down, The square-limbed Roman letters Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well Builds his monument mockingly; For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth 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 Atlantic is a stormy moat, and the Mediterranean,The blue pool in the old garden,More than five thousand years has drunk sacrificeOf ships and blood and shines in the sun; but here the Pacific:The ships, planes, wars are perfectly irrelevant.Neither our present blood-feud with the brave dwarfsNor any future world-quarrel of westeringAnd eastering man, the bloody migrations, greed of power, battle-falcons,Are a mote of dust in the great scale-pan.Here from this mountain shore, headland beyond stormy headland plunging like dolphins through the grey sea-smokeInto pale sea, look west at the hill of water: it is half the planet: this dome, this half-globe, this bulgingEyeball of water, arched over to Asia,Australia and white Antarctica: those are the eyelids that never close; this is the staring unsleepingEye of the earth, and what it watches is not our wars.”

“What is this thing called life? I believeThat the earth and the stars too, and the whole glittering universe, and rocks on the mountains have life,Only we do not call it so--I speak of the lifeThat oxidizes fats and proteins and carbo-Hydrates to live on, and from that chemical energyMakes pleasure and pain, wonder, love, adoration, hatred and terror: how do these things growFrom a chemical reaction?I think they were here already, I think the rocksAnd the earth and the other planets, and the stars and the galaxieshave their various consciousness, all things are conscious;But the nerves of an animal, the nerves and brainBring it to focus; the nerves and brain are like a burning-glassTo concentrate the heat and make it catch fire:It seems to us martyrs hotter than the blazing hearthFrom which it came. So we scream and laugh, clamorous animalsBorn howling to die groaning: the old stones in the dooryardPrefer silence; but those and all things have their own awareness,As the cells of a man have; they feel and feed and influence each other, each unto all,Like the cells of a man's body making one being,They make one being, one consciousness, one life, one God.”

“You have perhaps heard some false reportsOn the subject of God. He is not dead; and he is not a fable. He is not mocked nor forgotten--Successfully. 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 themWere that one bird. He has a bloody beak and harsh talons, he pounces and tears--And where is the German Reich? There alsoWill be prodigious America and world-owning China. I say that all hopes and empires will die like yours;Mankind will die, there will be no more fools; wisdom will die; the very stars will die;One fierce life lasts.”

“A little too abstract, a little too wise,It is time for us to kiss the earth again,It is time to let the leaves rain from the skies,Let the rich life run to the roots again.”

“The old woman sits on a bench before the door and quarrelsWith her meagre pale demoralized daughter.Once when I passed I found her alone, laughing in the sunAnd saying that when she was first marriedShe lived in the old farmhouse up Garapatas Canyon.(It is empty now, the roof has fallenBut the log walls hang on the stone foundation; the redwoodsHave all been cut down, the oaks are standing;The place is now more solitary than ever before.)"When I was nursing my second babyMy husband found a day-old fawn hid in a fern-brakeAnd brought it; I put its mouth to the breastRather than let it starve, I had milk enough for three babies.Hey how it sucked, the little nuzzler,Digging its little hoofs like quills into my stomach.I had more joy from that than from the others."Her face is deformed with age, furrowed like a bad roadWith market-wagons, mean cares and decay.She is thrown up to the surface of things, a cell of dry skinSoon to be shed from the earth's old eye-brows,I see that once in her spring she lived in the streaming arteries,The stir of the world, the music of the mountain.”

“That public men publish falsehoodsIs nothing new. That America must accept Like the historical republics corruption and empire Has been known for years. Be angry at the sun for setting If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and tum. They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors, This republic, Europe, Asia. Observe them gesticulating, Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate Man plays his part; the cold passion for truthHunts in no pack. You are not CatulIus, you know, To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far From Dante’s feet, but even farther from his dirty Political hatredS. Let boys want pleasure, and menStruggle for power, and women perhaps for fame, And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped. Yours is not theirs.”