The wizard and Princess Pennie and I plan to visit Tor House (below) the next time we’re in California. It was home of poet Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962). “Imagination, the traitor of the mind, has taken my solitude and slain it.” Yep. He was a dark one all right. Jeffers is not one of my favorite poets, but I love his taste in architecture. Tor House is in Steinbeck country on the central coast. This is a typical Jeffers poem. Dark. Stark.

It’s called The Epic Stars.

The heroic stars spending themselves,
Coining their very flesh into bullets for the lost battle,
They must burn out at length like used candles;
And Mother Night will weep in her triumph, taking home her heroes.
There is the stuff for an epic poem–
This magnificent raid at the heart of darkness, this lost battle–
We don’t know enough, we’ll never know.
Oh happy Homer, taking the stars and the Gods for granted.

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