Eye, The

The Eye

Robinson Jeffers

(1887-1962)

The Atlantic is a stormy moat; and the Mediterranean,

The blue pool in the old garden,

More than fine thousand years has drunk sacrifice

Of ships and blood, and shine in the sun; but here the Pacific –

Our ships, planes, wars are perfectly irrelevant.

Neither our present blood-feud with the brave dwarfs

Nor any future world-quarrel of westering

And eastering man, the bloody migrations, greed of power, clash of faiths –

Is a speck of dust on the great scale-pan.

Here from this mountain shore, headland beyond stormy headlands plung-

ing like dolphins through the blue sea-smoke

Into pale sea – look west at the hill of water: it is half the planet: this

Dome, this half-globe, this bulging

Eyeball of water, arched over to Asia,

Australia and white Antarctica: those are the eyelids that never close;

This is the staring unsleeping

Eye of the earth; and what it watches is not our wars.