I did not dream the taste of wine could bind with granite,
Nor honey and milk please you; but sweetly
They mingle down the storm-worn cracks among the mosses,
Interpenetrating the silent
Wing-prints of ancient weathers long at peace, and the older
Scars of primal fire, and the stone
Endurance that is waiting millions of years to carry
A corner of the house, this also destined.
Lend me the stone strength of the past and I will lend you
The wings of the future, for I have them.
How dear you will be to me when I too grow old, old comrade.
🔹Robinson Jeffers
Tor House…House of the Outcrop…and its accompanying tower, Hawk Tower, was built by Robinson Jeffers, one of America’s most noted poets in the 1920s-30s. He even appeared on the cover of Time Magazine in 1932. He and his wife, Una, decided to build a house in Carmel, as the area resembled the rock outcroppings in Cornwall, England, where they had wanted to live. He helped the stone masons build the dwelling, and a few years later his wife asked him to build a tower. The tower only took 4 years, even though he hauled the stones and built it himself. For as large and imposing as it looks on the outside, there are two small (tiny) rooms on the first floor where his twin sons played, and a small room on the second floor, where Una had a desk and couch. This room is the photo with three windows that resembles a church. As you can see from the photos, the house itself had a low ceiling and flowers everywhere! It was quite spectacular, right on the ocean, with the rooms of the house looking out onto the waves and surf. The last photo is of a “secret passageway” leading upstairs. The house had many built-in drawers, cupboards, and compartments, as well as inlaid tiles and statue heads, etc. The complex is now on the National Register of Historic Places.
