Inscription For A Gravestone

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



I am not dead, I have only become inhuman:
That is to say,
Undressed myself of laughable prides and infirmities,
But not as a man
Undresses to creep into bed, but like an athlete
Stripping for the race.
The delicate ravel of nerves that made me a measurer
Of certain fictions
Called good and evil; that made me contract with pain
And expand with pleasure;
Fussily adjusted like a little electroscope:
That's gone, it is true;
(I never miss it; if the universe does,
How easily replaced!)
But all the rest is heightened, widened, set free.
I admired the beauty
While I was human, now I am part of the beauty.
I wander in the air,
Being mostly gas and water, and flow in the ocean;
Touch you and Asia
At the same moment; have a hand in the sunrises
And the glow of this grass.
I left the light precipitate of ashes to earth
For a love-token.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 10, 2023

48 sec read
214

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDEFGHIGJGKLGMMGANBOPA
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 824
Words 161
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 24

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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