Jeffers helped with the construction of the cottage as an apprentice, not as a skilled craftsman. The cottage where he slept, wrote, and died was built by a hired stonemason. One fact that should be remembered in this context is that the house that Robinson Jeffers lived in was mostly built by hands other than his. He instructs the reader to look for evidence of his workmanship in the remnants of stonework and boasts, “my fingers had the art / To make stone love stone.” Yet there is a strain of boasting and self-mythologizing here that troubles me. In a sense, this poem represents the strongest link between the poet and his stone muse. Orion in December / Evenings was strung in the throat of the valley like a lamp-lighted bridge.
The poem features some of the most beautiful wording, I think, that Jeffers ever wrote: Among Jeffers’ poems, this was one of those that has echoed through me with strong sensation of subconscious presence.
The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers (1938).
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