Robinson Jeffers - Hellenistics lyrics

[I] I look at the Greek-derived design that nourished my infancy this Wedgwood copy of the Portland vase: Someone had given it to my father my eyes at five years old used to devour it by the hour. I look at a Greek coin, four-drachma piece struck by Lysimachus: young Alexander's head With the horns of Ammon and brave brow-ridges, the bright pride and immortal youth and wild sensitiveness. I think of Achilles, Sappho, the Nike. I think of those mercenaries who marched in the heart of Asia And lived to salute the sea: the lean faces like lance-heads, the grace of panthers. The dull welter of Asia. I am past childhood, I look at this ocean and the fishing birds, the streaming skerries, the shining water, The foam-heads, the exultant dawn-light going west, the pelicans, their huge wings half folded, plunging like stones. Whatever it is catches my heart in its hands, whatever it is makes me shudder with love And painful joy and the tears prickle ... the Greeks were not its inventors. The Greeks were not the inventors Of shining clarity and j**el-sharp form and the beauty of God. He was free with men before the Greeks came: He is here naked on the shining water. Every eye that has a man's nerves behind it has known him. [II] I think of the dull welter of Asia. I think of squalid savages along the Congo: the natural Condition of man, that makes one say of all beasts 'They are not contemptible. Man is contemptible.' I see The squalor of our own frost-bitten forefathers. I will praise the Greeks for having pared down the shame of three vices Natural to man and no other animal, cruelty and filth and superstition, grained in man's making. [III] The age darkens, Europe mixes her cups of d**h, all the little Caesars fidget on their thrones, The old wound opens its clotted mouth to ask for new wounds. Men will fight through; men have tough hearts. Men will fight through to the autumn flowering and ordered prosperity. They will lift their heads in the great cities Of the empire and say: 'Freedom? Freedom was a fire. We are well quit of freedom, we have found prosperity.' They will say, 'Where now are the evil prophets?' Thus for a time in the age's afterglow, the sterile time; But the wounds drain, and freedom has died, slowly the machines break down, slowly the wilderness returns. [IV] Oh distant future children going down to the foot of the mountain, the new barbarism, the night of time, Mourn your own dead if you remember them, but not for civilization, not for our scuttled futilities. You are saved from being little entrails feeding large brains, you are saved from being little empty bundles of enjoyment, You are not to be fractional supported people but complete men; you will guard your own heads, you will have proud eyes. You will stand among the spears when you meet; life will be lovely and terrible again, great and in earnest; You will know hardship, hunger and violence: these are not the evils: what power can save you from the real evils Of barbarism? What poet will be born to tell you to hate cruelty and filth? What prophet will warn you When the witch-doctors begin dancing, or if any man says 'I am a priest,' to k** them with spears?