Bixby's Landing
They burned lime on the hill and dropped it down
here in an iron car
On a long cable; here the ships warped in
And took their loads from the engine, the water
is deep to the cliff. The car
Hangs half way over in the gape of the gorge,
Stationed like a north star above the peaks of
the redwoods, iron perch
For the little red hawks when they cease from
hovering
When they've struck prey; the spider's fling of a
cable rust-glued to the pulleys.
The laborers are gone, but what a good multitude
Is here in return: the rich-lichened rock, the
rose-tipped stone-crop, the constant
Ocean's voices, the cloud-lighted space.
The kilns are cold on the hill but here in the
rust of the broken boiler
Quick lizards lighten, and a rattle-snake flows
Down the cracked masonry, over the crumbled
fire-brick. In the rotting timbers
And roofless platforms all the free companies
Of windy grasses have root and make seed; wild
buckwheat blooms in the fat
Weather-slacked lime from the bursted barrels.
Two duckhawks darting in the sky of their cliff-hung
nest are the voice of the headland.
Wine-hearted solitude, our mother the wilderness,
Men's failures are often as beautiful as men's
triumphs, but your returnings
Are even more precious than your first presence.
Submitted by Holt
poem by Robinson Jeffers
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Related quotes
Imitators
A boat came in; the cliff was baked;
The noisy boat-chain fell and clanked on
The sand-an iron rattle-snake,
A rattling rust among the plankton.
And two got out; and from the cliff
I felt like calling down, 'Forgive me,
But would you kindly throw yourselves
Apart or else into the river?
Your miming is without a fault-
Of course the seeker finds the fancied-
But stop this playing with the boat!
Your model on the cliff resents it.'
poem by Boris Pasternak
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Cable Tv
I used to think my life was so empty
I used to think life was passin me by
Well, I was just about ready
To curl up and die
But then one day I got a visit
From the cable company
Well, they hooked me up and plugged me right in
And now I got cable tv
And now I get to watch the stock report in korean
Midget wrestling on channel three
It costs me fifty bucks a month just to see em
Yeah, but thats all right with me
I got cable tv (cable tv)
Cable tv (cable tv)
Oh, eighty-three channels of ecstasy
I love my cable tv, yeah
I love my cable tv
I got the siamese faith healers network
The news and weather from peru
I got celebrity hockey
The racketball channel too
Bugs bunny direct from atlanta
Mr. wizard is on at five
I got a satellite dish on the trunk of my car
So I can watch mtv while I drive
Im talkin bout real quality programs
The kind you just cant get for free
Now I never wanna leave my apartment
cause theres just so much for me to see
On my cable tv (cable tv)
Cable tv(cable tv)
Well, if you need to find me
You know where Ill be
Watchin my cable tv, yeah
Watchin my cable tv
cause I love my cable tv, yeah
I love my cable tv
My friends are gettin kinda worried
They think Im turning into some kinda freak
Oh, but theyre just jealous cause Ive seen porkys
Twenty-seven times this week
On my cable tv (cable tv)
Cable tv (cable tv)
Yeah, the greatest thing thats ever happened to me
I love my cable tv, yeah
I love my cable tv
Well, I got to have cable tv, yeah
I need my cable tv
Well, I love, I love my cable tv (tv)
Got to have cable tv (tv)
Well, I got to have my cable tv, yeah (tv)
Cant live without my cable tv
Well, I said, got to have some cable tv (tv)
Ive got to have my cable tv
I said cable tv, yeah (tv)
Got to have cable tv
song performed by by Weird Al Yankovic
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Key Lime Pie
Ocean breeze, tire swing
Coconut fall if you shake that thing
And my, my, my - my key lime pie
Not too tart, not too sweet
My baby loves to watch me eat
Her key lime pie
Her key lime pie
Tall green tree, yellow bird
Bikini bottom and a tie-dyed shirt
And my, my, my - my key lime pie
Big white sail, red sunset
Lobster tail and don't forget
My, my, my - my key lime pie
A six string, ten shots
Of Cruzan rum, hey, I like it a lot
With my, my, my - my key lime pie
Tortola, a full moon
Shining down on a blue lagoon
And my, my, my - my key lime pie
Not too tart, not too sweet
My baby loves to watch me eat
Her key lime pie
Her key lime pie
We got Ginger and Mary Ann
Cookin' up a real good tan
And my, my, my - my key lime pie
Key lime pie, key lime pie
Key lime pie, my my my
My, my, my key lime pie
Key lime pie, key lime pie
song performed by by Kenny Chesney
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
The Summit Redwood
Only stand high a long enough time your lightning
will come; that is what blunts the peaks of
redwoods;
But this old tower of life on the hilltop has taken
it more than twice a century, this knows in
every
Cell the salty and the burning taste, the shudder
and the voice.
The fire from heaven; it has
felt the earth's too
Roaring up hill in autumn, thorned oak-leaves tossing
their bright ruin to the bitter laurel-leaves,
and all
Its under-forest has died and died, and lives to be
burnt; the redwood has lived. Though the fire
entered,
It cored the trunk while the sapwood increased. The
trunk is a tower, the bole of the trunk is a
black cavern,
The mast of the trunk with its green boughs the
mountain stars are strained through
Is like the helmet-spike on the highest head of an
army; black on lit blue or hidden in cloud
It is like the hill's finger in heaven. And when the
cloud hides it, though in barren summer, the
boughs
Make their own rain.
Old Escobar had a cunning trick
when he stole beef. He and his grandsons
Would drive the cow up here to a starlight death and
hoist the carcass into the tree's hollow,
Then let them search his cabin he could smile for
pleasure, to think of his meat hanging secure
Exalted over the earth and the ocean, a theft like a
star, secret against the supreme sky.
Submitted by Holt
poem by Robinson Jeffers
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us
Blood from a stone, water from wine.
Born under earplay design.
A stroke of bad luck, wrong place, wrong time.
Let's fly up out of the lime.
The story is a sad one, told many times.
The story of my life in trying times.
Just add water, stir in lime.
How the west was won and where it got us.
Canary got trapped, the uranium mine.
A stroke of bad luck, now the bird has died.
A marker to mark where my tears run dry.
I cross it, bless it, alkali.
The story is a sad one, told many times.
The story of my life in trying times.
Just add water, stir in lime.
How the west was won and where it got us.
I didn't wear glasses cause I thought it might rain.
Now I can't see anything.
I made a mistake, chalked it up to design.
I cracked through time, space, Godless and dry.
I point my nose to the northern star,
Watch her decline from a hazy distance.
The story is a sad one, told many times.
The story of my life in trying times.
Just add water, stir in lime.
How the west was won and where it got us
song performed by by REM
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
How The West Was Won & Where It Got Us
Blood from a stone
Water from wine.
Born under earplay design.
A stroke of bad luck,
Wrong place, wrong time.
Lets fly up out of the lime.
The story is a sad one, told many times.
The story of my life in trying times.
Just add water, stir in lime.
How the west was won and where it got us.
Canary got trapped, the uranium mine.
A stroke of bad luck, now the bird has died.
A marker to mark where my tears run dry.
I cross it, bless it, alkali.
The story is a sad one, told many times.
The story of my life in trying times.
Just add water, stir in lime.
How the west was won and where it got us.
I didnt wear glasses cause I thought it might rain.
Now I cant see anything.
I made a mistake, chalked it up to design.
I cracked through time, space, godless and dry.
I point my nose to the northern star,
Watch the decline from a hazy distance.
The story is a sad one, told many times.
The story of my life in trying times.
Just add water, stir in lime.
How the west was won and where it got us.
song performed by by REM
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
At William Maclennan's Grave
Here where the cypress tall
Shadows the stucco wall,
Bronze and deep,
Where the chrysanthemums blow,
And the roses--blood and snow--
He lies asleep.
Florence dreameth afar;
Memories of foray and war,
Murmur still;
The Certosa crowns with a cold
Cloud of snow and gold
The olive hill.
What has he now for the streams
Born sweet and deep with dreams
From the cedar meres?
Only the Arno's flow,
Turbid, and weary, and slow
With wrath and tears.
What has he now for the song
Of the boatmen, joyous and long,
Where the rapids shine?
Only the sound of toil,
Where the peasants press the soil
For the oil and wine.
Spirit-fellow in sooth
With bold La Salle and Duluth,
And La Vérandrye,--
Nothing he has but rest,
Deep in his cypress nest
With memory.
Hearts of steel and of fire,
Why do ye love and aspire,
When follows
Death--all your passionate deeds,
Garnered with rust and with weeds
In the hollows?
God that hardened the steel,
Bid the flame leap and reel,
Gave us unrest;
We act in the dusk afar,
In a star beyond your star,
His behest.
'We leave you dreams and names
Still we are iron and flames,
Biting and bright;
Into some virgin world,
Champions, we are hurled,
Of venture and fight.'
Here where the shadows fall,
From the cypress by the wall,
Where the roses are--
Here is a dream and a name,
There, like a rose of flame,
Rises--a star.
poem by Duncan Campbell Scott
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Iron Man came to the top of the cliff. How far had he walked? Nobody knows. Where did he come from? Nobody knows. How was he made? Nobody knows. Taller than a house the Iron Man stood at the top of the cliff, at the very brink, in the darkness.
quote by Ted Hughes
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
Vote! | Copy!
The Burden of Time
Before the seas and mountains were brought forth,
I reigned. I hung the universe in space,
I capped earth's poles with ice to South and North,
And set the moving tides their bounds and place.
I smoothed the granite mountains with my hand,
My fingers gave the continents their form;
I rent the heavens and loosed upon the land
The fury of the whirlwind and the storm.
I stretched the dark sea like a nether sky
Fronting the stars between the ice-clad zones;
I gave the deep his thunder; the Most High
Knows well the voice that shakes His mountain thrones.
I trod the ocean caverns black as night,
And silent as the bounds of outer space,
And where great peaks rose darkly towards the light
I planted life to root and grow apace.
Then through a stillness deeper than the grave's,
The coral spires rose slowly one by one,
Until the white shafts pierced the upper waves
And shone like silver in the tropic sun.
I ploughed with glaciers down the mountain glen,
And graved the iron shore with stream and tide;
I gave the bird her nest, the lion his den,
The snake long jung~le-grass wherein to hide.
In lonely gorge and over hill and plain,
I sowed the giant forests of the world;
The great earth like a human heart in pain
Has quivered with the meteors I have hurled.
I plunged whole continents beneath the deep,
And left them sepulchred a million years;
I called, and lo, the drowned lands rose from sleep,
Sundering the waters of the hemispheres.
I am the lord and arbiter of man --
I hold and crush between my finger-tips
Wild hordes that drive the desert caravan,
Great nations that go down to sea in ships.
In sovereign scorn I tread the races down,
As each its puny destiny fulfils,
On plain and island, or where huge cliffs frown,
Wrapt in the deep thought of the ancient hills.
The wild sea searches vainly round the land
For those proud fleets my arm has swept away;
Vainly the wind along the desert sand
Calls the great names of kings who once held sway.
Yea, Nineveh and Babylon the great
Are fallen -- like ripe ears at harvest-tide;
I set my heel upon their pomp and state,
The people's serfdom and the monarch's pride.
One doom waits all -- art, speech, law, gods, and men,
Forests and mountains, stars and shining sun, --
The hand that made them shall unmake again,
I curse them and they wither one by one.
Waste altars, tombs, dead cities where men trod,
Shall roll through space upon the darkened globe,
Till I myself be overthrown, and God
Cast off creation like an outworn robe.
poem by Frederick George Scott
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Rags & Old Iron
Norman curtis, oscar brown jr
Rags old iron rags old iron
All he was buying was just rags and old iron
I heard that old rag man now making his rounds
He came right to my alley lord with sorrowful sounds
Crying rags old iron and pulling his cart
Ask him how much hed give me for my broken heart
Rags old iron rags old iron
All he was buying was just rags and old iron
So I asked that old rag man how much he would pay
For a heart that was broken baby when you went away
For a burnt out old love light that no longer beams
And a couple of slightly used second hand dreams
Rags old iron rags old iron
All he was buying was just rags and old iron
For those big empty promises you used to make
For those memories of you that are no longer sweet
I wish he could haul them off down the street
Rags old iron rags old iron
All he was buying was just rags and old iron
When love doesnt last tell me what is it worth
It was once mamas most precious possession on earth
When I asked that old rag man if hed like to buy
He just shook his head and continued to cry
Rags old iron rags old iron
All he was buying was just rags and old iron
Rags old iron rags old iron
Rags old iron rags old iron rags old iron
song performed by by Nina Simone
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Phenomena
Great-enough both accepts and subdues; the great frame takes
all creatures;
From the greatness of their element they all take beauty.
Gulls; and the dingy freightship lurching south in the eye of a
rain-wind;
The airplane dipping over the hill; hawks hovering
The white grass of the headland; cormorants roosting upon the
guano-
Whitened skerries; pelicans awind; sea-slime
Shining at night in the wave-stir like drowned men's lanterns;
smugglers signaling
A cargo to land; or the old Point Pinos lighthouse
Lawfully winking over dark water; the flight of the twilight
herons,
Lonely wings and a cry; or with motor-vibrations
That hum in the rock like a new storm-tone of the ocean's to
turn eyes westward
The navy's new-bought Zeppelin going by in the twilight,
Far out seaward; relative only to the evening star and the ocean
It slides into a cloud over Point Lobos.
poem by Robinson Jeffers
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Summer Holiday
When the sun shouts and people abound
One thinks there were the ages of stone and the age of
bronze
And the iron age; iron the unstable metal;
Steel made of iron, unstable as his mother; the tow-
ered-up cities
Will be stains of rust on mounds of plaster.
Roots will not pierce the heaps for a time, kind rains
will cure them,
Then nothing will remain of the iron age
And all these people but a thigh-bone or so, a poem
Stuck in the world's thought, splinters of glass
In the rubbish dumps, a concrete dam far off in the
mountain...
poem by Robinson Jeffers
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Rocket Love
Do do do, do do do, do do do, do do do
Do do do, do do do, do do do-oo
I longed for you since I was born
A woman sensitive and warm
And that you were
With pride and strength no one would test
But yet have feminie finesse
And so much more
You took me riding in your rocket gave me a star
But at a half a mile from heaven you dropped me back
Down to this cold, cold world
Took me riding in your rocket gave me a star
But at a half a mile from heaven you dropped me back
Down to this cold, cold world
A female shakespeare of your time
With looks to blow picassos mind
You were the best
Your body moved with grace and song
Like symphonies by bach or brahms
Nevertheless, oh oh
You took me riding in your rocket gave me a star
But at a half a mile from heaven you dropped me back
Down to this cold, cold world
Ooh you took me riding in your rocket gave me a star
But at a half a mile from heaven you dropped me back
Down to this cold, cold world
Da da da, da da da, da da da, da da da
Da da da, da da da-aa
The passion burning in your heart
Would make hells fire seem like a spark
Where did it go
Just why that you would overnight
Turn love to stone as cold as ice
Ill never know
But you took me riding in your rocket gave me a star
But at a half a mile from heaven you dropped me back
Down to this cold, cold world
Baby you took me riding in your rocket gave me a star
But at a half a mile from heaven you dropped me back
Down to this cold, cold world
Cold, too cold, you took me riding in your rocket gave me a star
But at a half a mile from heaven you dropped me back
Down to this cold, cold world
Oh, oh, oh, took me riding in your rocket gave me a star
But at a half a mile from heaven you dropped me back
Down to into this cold, cold world
I would not do that to a dog
Took me riding in your rocket gave me a star
But at a half a mile from heaven you dropped me back
Down to this cold, cold world
You took me riding in your rocket gave me a star
But at a half a mile from heaven you dropped me back
Down to this cold, cold world
Ooh baby
Rocket love
song performed by by Stevie Wonder
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Contrast
The world has many seas, Mediterranean, Atlantic, but
here is the shore of the one ocean.
And here the heavy future hangs like a cloud; the
enormous scene; the enormous games preparing
Weigh on the water and strain the rock; the stage is
here, the play is conceived; the players are
not found.
I saw on the Sierras, up the Kaweah valley above the
Moro rock, the mountain redwoods
Like red towers on the slopes of snow; about their
bases grew a bushery of Christmas green,
Firs and pines to be monuments for pilgrimage
In Europe; I remembered the Swiss forests, the dark
robes of Pilatus, no trunk like these there;
But these are underwood; they are only a shrubbery
about the boles of the trees.
Our people are clever and masterful;
They have powers in the mass, they accomplish marvels.
It is possible Time will make them before it
annuls them, but at present
There is not one memorable person, there is not one
mind to stand with the trees, one life with
the mountains.
Submitted by Holt
poem by Robinson Jeffers
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Diamonds and Rust
I'll be damned, here comes your ghost again
but that's not unusual
it's just that the moon is full
and you decided to come
And here I sit, hand on the telephone
hearing the voice I'd known
a couple of light years ago
headed straight for a fall
But we both know what memories can bring
they bring Diamonds and Rust
yes we both know what memories can bring
they bring Diamonds and Rust
Now I see you standing with brown leaves all around and snow in your hair
Now we're smiling out the window of the crummy hotel over washington square
and then comes that white clouds, mingles and hangs in the air
Speaking strictly for me
we both could've died then and there
Now you're telling me you're not nostalgic
then give me another word for it
you were so good with words
and at keeping things paid
cause I need some of that vagueness now, it's all come back too clearly
yes, I love you dearly
and if you're offering me diamonds and rust
I've already paid
But we both know what memories can bring
they bring Diamonds and Rust
yes we both know what memories can bring
they bring Diamonds and Rust
Diamonds, Diamonds and Rust
Diamonds, Diamonds and Rust
Diamonds, Diamonds and Rust
Diamonds, Diamonds and Rust
song performed by by Judas Priest, music by Judas Priest, lyrics by Joan Baez
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
The Rock In The Sea
Think of our blindness where the water burned!
Are we so certain that those wings, returned
And turning, we had half discerned
Before our dazzled eyes had surely seen
The bird aloft there, did not mean?—
Our hearts so seized upon the sign!
Think how we sailed up-wind, the brine
Tasting of daphne, the enormous wave
Thundering in the water cave—
Thunder in stone. And how we beached the skiff
And climbed the coral of that iron cliff
And found what only in our hearts we’d heard—
The silver screaming of that one, white bird:
The fabulous wings, the crimson beak
That opened, red as blood, to shriek
And clamor in that world of stone,
No voice to answer but its own.
What certainty, hidden in our hearts before,
Found in the bird its metaphor?
poem by Archibald MacLeish
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Carve Away The Stone
Words by neil peart, music by geddy lee and alex lifeson
You can roll that stone
To the top of the hill
Drag your ball and chain
Behind you
You can carry that weight
With an iron will
Or let the pain remain
Behind you
Chip away the stone
(sisyphus)
Chip away the stone
Make the burden lighter
If you must roll that rock alone
You can drive those wheels
To the end of the road
You will still find the past right
Behind you
The weight of the load
Try to put the sins of the past night
Behind you
Carve away the stone
(sisyhpus)
Carve away the stone
Make a graven image
With some features of your own
You call roll the stone
To the top of the hill
You can carry that weight
With an iron will
You can drive those wheels
To the end of the road
You can try to deny
The weight of the load
Roll away the stone
(sisyhpus)
Roll away the stone
If you could just move yours
I could get working on my own
song performed by by Rush
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Lines on Beachville
Of Beachville, village of the plain,
We now will sing a short refrain,
For here the Thames doth pleasant flow
And charms to landscape doth bestow ;
Though river here it is not deep,
Yet banks slope graceful up the steep
And from the summit of the hills
You look down on the famed lime kilns,
And 'tis full worthy poets rhyme
The whiteness of thy pure fine lime.
Your glory never shall be gone
While you have quarries of this stone ;
In influence you yet will wax
With mills for flour and also flax.
poem by James McIntyre
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Farewell To Florida
I
Go on, high ship, since now, upon the shore,
The snake has left its skin upon the floor.
Key West sank downward under massive clouds
And silvers and greens spread over the sea. The moon
Is at the mast-head and the past is dead.
Her mind will never speak to me again.
I am free. High above the mast the moon
Rides clear of her mind and the waves make a refrain
Of this: that the snake has shed its skin upon
The floor. Go on through the darkness. The waves fly back
II
Her mind had bound me round. The palms were hot
As if I lived in ashen ground, as if
The leaves in which the wind kept up its sound
From my North of cold whistled in a sepulchral South,
Her South of pine and coral and coraline sea,
Her home, not mine, in the ever-freshened Keys,
Her days, her oceanic nights, calling
For music, for whisperings from the reefs.
How content I shall be in the North to which I sail
And to feel sure and to forget the bleaching sand ...
III
I hated the weathery yawl from which the pools
Disclosed the sea floor and the wilderness
Of waving weeds. I hated the vivid blooms
Curled over the shadowless hut, the rust and bones,
The trees likes bones and the leaves half sand, half sun.
To stand here on the deck in the dark and say
Farewell and to know that that land is forever gone
And that she will not follow in any word
Or look, nor ever again in thought, except
That I loved her once ... Farewell. Go on, high ship.
IV
My North is leafless and lies in a wintry slime
Both of men and clouds, a slime of men in crowds.
The men are moving as the water moves,
This darkened water cloven by sullen swells
Against your sides, then shoving and slithering,
The darkness shattered, turbulent with foam.
To be free again, to return to the violent mind
That is their mind, these men, and that will bind
Me round, carry me, misty deck, carry me
To the cold, go on, high ship, go on, plunge on.
poem by Wallace Stevens
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Rust eats iron
Rust eats iron.
Separation from wife
eats husband
Contempt by kith and kins
And serving evil master
Eats body by burning silently
Corroding heart and soul body
from within.
Rust eats iron.
poem by Gajanan Mishra
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!