Let Them Alone

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



If God has been good enough to give you a poet
Then listen to him. But for God's sake let him alone until he is dead;
no prizes, no ceremony,
They kill the man. A poet is one who listens
To nature and his own heart; and if the noise of the world grows up
around him, and if he is tough enough,
He can shake off his enemies, but not his friends.
That is what withered Wordsworth and muffled Tennyson, and would have
killed Keats; that is what makes
Hemingway play the fool and Faulkner forget his art.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 09, 2023

30 sec read
116

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDEFGHIJ
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 502
Words 101
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 10

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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