Birds and Fishes
"Birds and Fishes" is a poem by the American and Californian writer Robinson Jeffers. It is included in The Beginning and the End and Other Poems, published posthumously in 1963. Creation Jeffers wrote the poem in late 1954 or early 1955. Summary The poem consists of 21 lines, of which the uneven lines generally have more syllables. It describes a yearly feeding frenzy in October, when fishes drawn to the shore attract large numbers of seabirds. The behavior of the birds is likened to a "witches' sabbath", "mob / Hysteria", and to humans "finding Gold in the street". The birds are attributed with envy, malice, greed, and a lack of pity for the fishes. The poet concludes that ideas of justice and mercy are concerns for neither animals nor God, and that life is characterized by hunger, terror and torment. He sees beauty in this. The quality of the scene described is not related to human concerns of "mercy", "mind" or "goodness", but to "the beauty of God". Themes "Birds and Fishes" presents a clear example of how Jeffers viewed nature in his late nature poetry. In his early works, he expressed a worldview close to transcendentalism, and treated nature