From “The Loving Shepherdess” [Unhappy shepherdess,]
Unhappy shepherdess,
Numbed feet and hands and the face
Turbid with fever
You love, and that is no unhappy fate
Not one person but all, does it warm your winter?
Walking with numbed and cut feet
Along the last ridge of migration
On the last coast above the not-to-be-colonized
Ocean, across the streams of the people
Drawing a faint pilgrimage
As if you were drawing a line at the end of the world
Under the columns of ancestral figures:
So many generations in Asia
So many in Europe, so many in America:
To sum the whole. Poor Clare Walker, she already
Imagines what sum she will cast in April.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on October 18, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
“The Loving Shepherdess” was first published in Dear Judas and Other Poems (Liveright, 1929), Jeffers’s seventh book. The second of two long-form narrative poems, “The Loving Shepherdess” follows the story of Clare Walker, a tragic heroine, on her journey along the West Coast. In “The Loving Shepherdess by Robinson Jeffers,” from Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition (Salem Press, 2007), James Livingston writes, “The poem explores themes of love, sacrifice, and the struggle for survival in a harsh environment. Clare’s interactions with animals and her unwavering dedication to her sheep reflect a deep intertwining of human and animal suffering, encapsulating Jeffers’s ideas of Inhumanism. As Clare’s physical and mental state deteriorates, she draws parallels between her own struggles and the natural world, ultimately leading to a poignant acknowledgment of mortality and loss.”
Robinson Jeffers
Robinson Jeffers, born on January 10, 1887, in Pennsylvania, was a poet and a pioneer of ecopoetics. A former Chancellor, Jeffers authored numerous poetry collections, including The Double Axe and Other Poems (Random House, 1948) and The Woman at Point Sur (Liveright, 1927). Jeffers died on January 20, 1962, in Carmel, California.