People get confused by the title of this poem; this Robinson Jeffers offering is easily mixed up with his more famous and far more often anthologized “Shine, Perishing Republic.” Jeffers, who was educated here in Los Angeles at Oxy and USC, became the great poet of the California coast. At turns tender and misanthropic, he’s a challenging and often disturbing writer. I grew up hearing my mother read his poems aloud. He and Auden stand alone above all others in my heart.
In a college frosh comp lit class, we were asked to each select a poem that reflected our political and social values. Knowing that most of my classmates would turn hard to the left, I picked this one, at least partly for the thrill of being contrary. I was never seriously infatuated with the ideology of “noble reticence”, but I did so enjoy tweaking my professor and my classmates with my outwardly sincere embrace of the reactionary worldview expressed herein. Still, there’s a part of me that does genuinely honor the true conservative instincts of Jeffers — the kind of outlook that embraces individual freedom, reverence for nature, and sees conservation of wildness as inextricably linked to authentic conservatism. And he’s smart enough to know that the pursuit of freedom is indeed beautiful, and always dangerous.
Shine, Republic
The quality of these trees, green height; of the sky, shining, of water, a clear flow; of the rock, hardness.
And reticence: each is noble in its quality. The love of freedom has been the quality of Western man.
There is a stubborn torch that flames from Marathon to Concord, its dangerous beauty binding three ages.
Into one time; the waves of barbarism and civilization have eclipsed but have never quenched it.
For the Greeks the love of beauty, for Rome of ruling; for the present age the passionate love of discovery;
But in one noble passion we are one; and Washington, Luther, Tacitus, Aeschylus, one kind of man.
And you, America, that passion made you. You were not born to prosperity, you were born to love freedom.
You did not say “en masse,” you said “independence.” But we cannot have all the luxuries and freedom also.
Freedom is poor and laborious; that torch is not safe but hungry, and often requires blood for its fuel.
You will tame it against it burn too clearly, you will hood it like a kept hawk, you will perch it on the wrist of Caesar.
But keep the tradition, conserve the forms, the observances, keep the spot sore. Be great, carve deep your heel-marks.
The states of the next age will no doubt remember you, and edge their love of freedom with contempt of luxury.
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