An eagle's nest on the head of an old redwood on one of the <br />precipice-footed ridges <br />Above Ventana Creek, that jagged country which nothing but a <br />falling meteor will ever plow; no horseman <br />Will ever ride there, no hunter cross this ridge but the winged <br />ones, no one will steal the eggs from this fortress. <br />The she-eagle is old, her mate was shot long ago, she is now mated <br />with a son of hers. <br />When lightning blasted her nest she built it again on the same <br />tree, in the splinters of the thunderbolt. <br />The she-eagle is older than I; she was here when the fires of <br />eighty-five raged on these ridges, <br />She was lately fledged and dared not hunt ahead of them but ate <br />scorched meat. The world has changed in her time; <br />Humanity has multiplied, but not here; men's hopes and thoughts <br />and customs have changed, their powers are enlarged, <br />Their powers and their follies have become fantastic, <br />The unstable animal never has been changed so rapidly. The <br />motor and the plane and the great war have gone over him, <br />And Lenin has lived and Jehovah died: while the mother-eagle <br />Hunts her same hills, crying the same beautiful and lonely cry and <br />is never tired; dreams the same dreams, <br />And hears at night the rock-slides rattle and thunder in the throats <br />of these living mountains. <br />It is good for man <br />To try all changes, progress and corruption, powers, peace and <br />anguish, not to go down the dinosaur's way <br />Until all his capacities have been explored: and it is good for him <br />To know that his needs and nature are no more changed in fact <br />in ten thousand years than the beaks of eagles.<br /><br />Robinson Jeffers<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-beaks-of-eagles/
