Though joy is better than sorrow joy is not great;

Of autumn pelicans nine or a dozen strung shorelong,But chiefly the gulls, the cloud-caligraphers of windy spiralsbefore a storm,Cruise north and south over the sea-rocks and overThat bluish enormous opal; very lately these alone, these and thecloudsAnd westering lights of heaven, crossed it; but thenA hull with standing canvas crept about Point Lobos . ….

Whether of earth or sky. Their gnarled roots clingLike wasted fingers of a clutching handIn the grim rock. A silent spectral bandThey watch the old sky, but hold no communingWith aught. Only, when some lone eagle’s wingFlaps past above their grey and desolate land,Or when the wind pants up a rough-hewn glen,Bending them down as…

A multitude of hands in the twilight, a cloud of men’s palms, nomore,No other picture. There’s no one to sayWhether the brown shy quiet people who are dead intendedReligion or magic, or made their tracingsIn the idleness of art; but over the division of years these carefulSigns-manual are now like a sealed messageSaying: ‘Look: we…

For his revolver, Michal climbed up the hillWeeping; but when he came with death in his handShe’d not go away, but watched. At the one shotThe great dark bird leaped at the roof of the cageIn silence and struck the wood; it fell, then suddenlyLooked small and soft, muffled in its folded wings.The nerves of…

At the bridge-builders, men, trucks, the power-shovels, the teemingend of the new coast-road at the mountain’s base.He sees the loops of the road go northward, headland beyondheadland, into gray mist over Eraser’s Point,He shakes his fist and makes the gesture of wringing a chicken’sneck, scowls and rides higher.I tooBelieve that the life of men who…

One might dream badly.In beautiful seas a beautifulAnd sainted island, but the dark earth so shallow on the rockGorged with bad meat.Kings buried in the lee of the saint,Kings of fierce Norway, blood-boltered Scotland, bitterly dreamingTreacherous Ireland.Imagine what delusions of grandeur,What suspicion-agonized eyes, what jellies of arrogance and terrorThis earth has absorbed.