Monday, January 26, 2015
Burial Wishes of Robinson Jeffers
Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962), The Collected Poetry, Vol. III: 1939-1962, ed. Tim Hunt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), p. 452:
Robert Zaller, Robinson Jeffers and the American Sublime (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), p. 368:
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I have told you in another poem, whether you've read it or not,1 "in another poem": with the title "The Deer Lay Down Their Bones" (id., pp. 407-408)
About a beautiful place the hard-wounded
Deer go to die in; their bones lie mixed in their little graveyard
Under leaves by a flashing cliff-brook, and if
They have ghosts they like it, the bones and mixed antlers are well content.
Now comes for me the time to engage
My burial place: put me in a beautiful place far off from men,
No cemetery, no necropolis,
And for God's sake no columbarium, nor yet no funeral.
But if the human animal were precious
As the quick deer or that hunter in the night the lonely puma
I should be pleased to lie in one grave with 'em.
Robert Zaller, Robinson Jeffers and the American Sublime (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), p. 368:
Like Una, he was cremated, and his ashes were buried beneath a yew tree in the courtyard of Tor House, where Una's had been laid twelve years before.Related posts:
- Burial Wishes of Cyril Connolly
- Burial Wishes of Samuel Butler
- Burial Wishes of Richard Burton
- Burial Wishes of James Howell
- Disregard of Funeral Instructions
- My Bed of Death
- Funeral of a Lover of Horace
- Cactus Ed's Funeral Instructions
- Kierkegaard's Tomb
