At night, toward dawn, all the lights of the shore have died, <br />And the wind moves. Moves in the dark <br />The sleeping power of the ocean, no more beastlike than manlike, <br />Not to be compared; itself and itself. <br />Its breath blown shoreward huddles the world with a fog; no stars <br />Dance in heaven; no ship's light glances. <br />I see the heavy granite bodies of the rocks of the headland, <br />That were ancient here before Egypt had pyramids, <br />Bulk on the gray of the sky, and beyond them the jets of young trees <br />I planted the year of the Versailles peace. <br />But here is the final unridiculous peace. Before the first man <br />Here were the stones, the ocean, the cypresses, <br />And the pallid region in the stone-rough dome of fog where the moon <br />Falls on the west. Here is reality. <br />The other is a spectral episode: after the inquisitive animal's <br />Amusements are quiet: the dark glory.<br /><br />Robinson Jeffers<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/hooded-night/
