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 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABCDEFGHIGJGKLGMMGANBOPA |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 824 |
Words | 161 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 24 |
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"Inscription For A Gravestone" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 7 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/32810/inscription-for-a-gravestone>.
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