Una's death in 1950 diminished life and poetry, just as Jeffers foresaw it would, but the rapturous anticipation of unconsciousness in nature produced some powerful lyrics in his remaining years. "Vulture" is a final testament to pantheistic death and resurrection. . . .

The desultory pace of the opening description of the wheeling vulture quickens with "But how beautiful he looked," and the poet's sudden and horrifying desire to serve as carrion for the beautiful, powerful bird of prey reaches the limit of consciousness and articulation in his "enskyment" in the blood and sinew of the barbaric bird. Across the continent from Paumanok, Jeffers the Romantic Inhumanist found himself in a place much like that of Whitman the Romantic individualist at the end of "Song of Myself:

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and

    my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.