Years and years ago I read the following lines. Lately, not a week goes by that I'm not reminded of them.

"Keep clear of the dupes that talk democracy

And the dogs that talk revolution,

Drunk with talk, liars and believers."

Robinson Jeffers, of course. "The Stars Go Over The Lonely Ocean."

Once upon a time, I would have assumed that many people knew it, but a singular experience has persuaded me otherwise. I met an intelligent, charming, extremely well educated young person who had never heard of H. L. Mencken. It seems to me that if Mencken can be somehow lost, then poor Jeffers doesn't stand a chance. For what it's worth, here's the entire poem...

Unhappy about some far off things

That are not my affair, wandering

Along the coast and up the lean ridges,

I saw in the evening

The stars go over the lonely ocean,

And a black-maned wild boar

Plowing with his snout on Mal Paso Mountain.

The old monster snuffled, "Here are sweet roots,

Fat grubs, slick beetles and sprouted acorns.

The best nation in Europe has fallen,

And that is Finland,

But the stars go over the lonely ocean,"

The old black-bristled boar,

Tearing the sod on Mal Paso Mountain.

"The world's in a bad way, my man,

And bound to be worse before it mends;

Better lie up in the mountain here

Four or five centuries,

While the stars go over the lonely ocean,"

Said the old father of wild pigs,

Plowing the fallow on Mal Paso Mountain.

"Keep clear of the dupes that talk democracy

And the dogs that talk revolution,

Drunk with talk, liars and believers.

I believe in my tusks.

Long live freedom and damn the ideologies,"

Said the gamey black-maned boar

Tusking the turf on Mal Paso Mountain.