The Broadstone

Robinson Jeffers 1887 (Allegheny) – 1962 (Carmel-by-the-Sea)



NEAR FINVOY, COUNTY ANTRIM
We climbed by the old quarries to the wide highland of heath,
On the slope of a swale a giant dolmen,
Three heavy basalt pillars upholding the enormous skb,
Towers and abides as if time were nothing.
The hard stones are hardly dusted with lichen in nobody knows
What ages of autumns in this high solitude
Since a recordless tribe of an unknown race lifted them up
To be the availing hero's memorial,
And temple of his power. They gathered their slighter dead
from the biting
Winds of time in his lee, the wide moor
About him is swollen with barrows and breaks upon many stones,
Lean gray guardians of old urned ashes,
In waves on waves of purple heather and blithe spray of its bells.
Here lies the hero, more than half God,
And nobody knows his name nor his race, in the bee-bright
necropolis,
With the stone circle and his tribe around him.
Sometimes perhaps (but who'd confess it?) in soft adolescence
We used to wonder at the world, and have wished
To hear some final harmony resolve the discords of life?
Here they are all perfectly resolved.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

59 sec read
106

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDEFGHIJEKLMNOPQARSTU
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 1,060
Words 197
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 23

Robinson Jeffers

John Robinson Jeffers was an American poet, known for his work about the central California coast. more…

All Robinson Jeffers poems | Robinson Jeffers Books

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