Only stand high a long enough time your lightning <br /> will come; that is what blunts the peaks of <br /> redwoods; <br />But this old tower of life on the hilltop has taken <br /> it more than twice a century, this knows in <br /> every <br />Cell the salty and the burning taste, the shudder <br /> and the voice. <br /> <br /> The fire from heaven; it has <br /> felt the earth's too <br />Roaring up hill in autumn, thorned oak-leaves tossing <br /> their bright ruin to the bitter laurel-leaves, <br /> and all <br />Its under-forest has died and died, and lives to be <br /> burnt; the redwood has lived. Though the fire <br /> entered, <br />It cored the trunk while the sapwood increased. The <br /> trunk is a tower, the bole of the trunk is a <br /> black cavern, <br />The mast of the trunk with its green boughs the <br /> mountain stars are strained through <br />Is like the helmet-spike on the highest head of an <br /> army; black on lit blue or hidden in cloud <br />It is like the hill's finger in heaven. And when the <br /> cloud hides it, though in barren summer, the <br /> boughs <br />Make their own rain. <br /> <br /> Old Escobar had a cunning trick <br /> when he stole beef. He and his grandsons <br />Would drive the cow up here to a starlight death and <br /> hoist the carcass into the tree's hollow, <br />Then let them search his cabin he could smile for <br /> pleasure, to think of his meat hanging secure <br />Exalted over the earth and the ocean, a theft like a <br /> star, secret against the supreme sky. <br /> <br /> <br />Submitted by Holt<br /><br />Robinson Jeffers<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-summit-redwood/
