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: David: : Thanks very much for your post, and for the paraphrase. : Coincidentally, Tim Hunt sent me a paraphrase that is much : like yours -- which argues strongly for it. Here is what : Tim sent (quoted with his permission): : ****************************************** : [Like a] White bird beating between the hilltops, : the dawn Rises at the head of the valley, : [through] The hush of the stars. : The redwoods shake their columns of shadow. : Deep in darkness the waters whisper : An adorable word. : Through the cool calm and the secret twilight-- : Silver-foreheaded, saintly, a maiden-- : Wonderfully move : Light and the waters (nightlong wakeful : Whenever we listened), while the sacred hilltops : Whiten in heaven. : **************************************** : By the way, I asked Tim if the TS at UT held a clue -- and he says : it doesn't. : Now, to the text: Tim achieves a coherent reading by repunctuating -- : which does give me some difficulty, but it's probably the only way. That, : or your way. Both you and he take "Silver-foreheaded, saintly, a maiden" to : refer to "twilight" -- while I was taking it to be the dawn itself, which : in some ways seems to me more logical, but it introduces problems later : (i.e. if these are attributes of "Light" two lines later, but "Light" : is the first in a series of noun phrases which consititute the subject . . . : well, you see the difficulty.) : So I'm adopting your and Tim's reading, that "Silver-foreheaded" etc refers : to "twilight." : My remaining difficulty is that in both your readings, "the sacred hilltops : whitening in heaven" is part of the compound subject for "move." That seems : odd. Certainly the "light" and the "waters nightlong wakeful" work that way; : but it's not clear to me in what sense the hilltops move. Maybe (appear to) : move because of the light stealing over them. . . . : I suggested to Tim that the punctuation was murky (thinking of O.W. Firkin's : indictment of RJ's grammar as "bushy" in _Californians_) and he replied: : "The syntax is murky. The punctuation is a problem. The fault : seems to be with what Jeffers wrote, not the transmission of the poem. In : later work Jeffers more clearly subordinates both syntax and punctuation : to the phrasing of the spoken voice. Here he's sort of betwixt and : between the diction of conventional verse (and standard punctuation) and : what he'd come to. The blend only partly works, and we end up with (at a : certain level of the poem) murk." : Actually, when I look back at John Courtney's post, I think he was on the : same trail as you and Tim, and I would have seen it if he'd done a compelte : paraphrase. So thanks to all three of you. I'm understanding a little : better, and learning to live with the murk. : : Please keep checking in here now and then; when I get a chance to re-read : _Californians_, which I intend to do soon, I'm sure I'll come up with : many more passages that are unclear to me. : -- Rob

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