🖊️ 🇺🇸 WONDERFUL WORDS: Shine, Republic

America 250’s big Fourth of July celebrations may have passed, but that just means we can now settle in to building our next 250 years. What should they look like? The twentieth-century American poet Robinson Jeffers offers one answer in “Shine, Republic.” It’s our homeschool poem-of-the-week for this fourth week of July.

Shine, Republic

The quality of these trees, green height; of the sky, shining; of water, a clear flow; of the rock, hardnessAnd reticence: each is noble in its quality. The love of freedom has been the quality of Western man.

There is a stubborn torch that flames from Marathon to Concord, its dangerous beauty binding three agesInto one time; the waves of barbarism and civilization have eclipsed but have never quenched it.

For the Greeks the love of beauty, for Rome of ruling; for the present age the passionate love of discovery;But in one noble passion we are one; and Washington, Luther, Tacitus, Aeschylus, one kind of man.

And you, America, that passion made you. You were not born to prosperity, you were born to love freedom.You did not say ‘en masse,’ you said ‘independence.’ But we cannot have all the luxuries and freedom also.

Freedom is poor and laborious; that torch is not safe but hungry, and often requires blood for its fuel.You will tame it against it burn too clearly, you will hood it like a kept hawk, you will perch it on the wrist of Caesar.

But keep the tradition, conserve the forms, the observances, keep the spot sore. Be great, carve deep your heel-marks.The states of the next age will no doubt remember you, and edge their love of freedom with contempt of luxury.

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) was born in Pennsylvania and moved west to California with his family when he was in his teens. He eventually settled in then-rural Carmel, California, and it was there that he established himself as a writer. His poetry tends to de-emphasize modernity and focus instead on history and the natural environment, and he was often considered politically controversial in his day. His prose-like writing style follows the earlier expansive style of Walt Whitman, but note that even though this week’s example may be considered “free verse,” it nevertheless does have some structure: each of the six two-line stanzas is either one, two, or three complete sentences, and overall the line-length is consistently 25–28 syllables.

In “Shine, Republic” Jeffers links the modest, small-r republicanism that has always been the American ideal to the life and history of other freedom-loving cultures of the past – Greece and Rome in particular. Republics, unlike Empires, traditionally value independence and freedom, not wealth and luxury. (You and your students can make a direct comparison here with William Emerson’s “A Nation’s Strength,” our first poem for this month of July: “Not gold but only men can make / A people great and strong.”) Independence and freedom may require you to struggle, but it is better – and more American, Jeffers would say – to struggle in freedom than to live under the decadence that comes with imperial wealth and luxury.

When you’re studying a poem that may be a bit difficult, be sure your students know it’s perfectly acceptable to be confused sometimes, and even to remain so. In this case, Jeffers’ phrase “You will tame it against it burn too clearly” strikes me as very odd. The only way I can make sense of it is to read it as “You will tame it lest it burn too clearly” – that must be what he meant, and he just used an odd construction to say it. But perhaps I’m wrong – I’ll keep this odd phrase in my mind and see if I ever come across something similar to it again.

What wonderful words and poetical productions are you and your students examining in your homeschool this Hercules Term? 😊

❡ A torch that flames: If a special line or turn of phrase happens to strike you in one of our weekly poems, just copy it onto your homeschool bulletin board for a few days and invite your students to speak it aloud — that’s all it takes to begin a new poetical friendship and learn a few lovely words that will stay with you for life. 🇺🇸

❡ Literary lives: The website of the Poetry Foundation includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including Robinson Jeffers) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers. ✒️

❡ Oh, the places you’ll go! Robinson Jeffers’ home and writing studio in Carmel, California, Tor House and Hawk Tower, is a museum and historic site that you and your students can visit someday on your homeschool travels. 🗺️️

❡ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar to follow along with us as we visit fifty of our favorite friends over the course of the year, and add your name to our River Houses mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox every week. 📫

❡ Homeschool calendars: We have a whole collection of free, printable, educational homeschool calendars and planners available on our main River Houses calendar page. They will help you create a light and easy structure for your homeschool year. Give them a try today! 🗓️

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