One who sees giant Orion, the torches of winter midnight, <br />Enormously walking above the ocean in the west of heaven; <br />And watches the track of this age of time at its peak of flight <br />Waver like a spent rocket, wavering toward new discoveries, <br />Mortal examinations of darkness, soundings of depth; <br />And watches the long coast mountain vibrate from bronze to green, <br />Bronze to green, year after year, and all the streams <br />Dry and flooded, dry and flooded, in the racing seasons; <br />And knows that exactly this and not another is the world, <br />The ideal is phantoms for bait, the spirit is a flicker on a grave; <br />May serve, with a certain detachment, the fugitive human race, <br />Or his own people, or his own household; but hardly himself; <br />And will not wind himself into hopes nor sicken with despairs. <br />He has found the peace and adored the God; he handles in autumn <br />The germs of far-future spring. <br />Sad sons of the stormy fall, <br />No escape, you have to inflict and endure; surely it is time for you <br />To learn to touch the diamond within to the diamond outside, <br />Thinning your humanity a little between the invulnerable diamonds, <br />Knowing that your angry choices and hopes and terrors are in vain, <br />But life and death not in vain; and the world is like a flight of swans.<br /><br />Robinson Jeffers<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/flight-of-swans/
