| Introduction | |
| Two Songs of Advent | 1 |
| One Ran Before | 1 |
| Song for a Small Boy Who Herds Goats | 2 |
| Alone | 3 |
| Myself | 4 |
| Still Morning | 4 |
| Awakening | 4 |
| Winter Echo | 4 |
| The Hunter | 4 |
| No Being | 4 |
| Spring | 5 |
| May | 5 |
| Spring Rain | 5 |
| Song | 5 |
| Sunrise | 5 |
| Fields | 5 |
| At Evening | 5 |
| Cool Nights | 6 |
| Sleep | 6 |
| The Aspen's Song | 6 |
| The Walker | 6 |
| Blue Mountain | 6 |
| God of Roads | 6 |
| September | 6 |
| A Lady | 6 |
| Alone | 7 |
| A Deer | 7 |
| Man in Desert | 7 |
| Desert | 7 |
| The End | 7 |
| High Valleys | 7 |
| Awaiting Snow | 7 |
| Hill Burial | 8 |
| The Precincts of February | 8 |
| The Resurrection | 9 |
| Tewa Spring | 10 |
| Dark Spring | 10 |
| The Crystal Sun | 11 |
| Jose's Country | 13 |
| The Upper Meadows | 14 |
| The Moonlight | 14 |
| October | 15 |
| The Impalpable Void | 16 |
| "The Fragile Season" | 16 |
| Genesis | 17 |
| Exodus | 17 |
| The Vigil | 18 |
| Moonrise | 18 |
| Alba for Hecate | 18 |
| The Cold | 19 |
| Digue dondaine, digue dondon | 20 |
| Nocturne | 21 |
| "Quod Tegit Omnia" | 22 |
| March Dusk | 23 |
| The Lamplight | 24 |
| Flesh of Flowers | 25 |
| Under Rain | 26 |
| Midnight Wind | 26 |
| Complaint | 27 |
| The Muezzin | 28 |
| Song | 29 |
| April | 29 |
| Song | 30 |
| Full Moon | 31 |
| Love Song | 31 |
| Sleep | 31 |
| The Cold Room | 31 |
| The Bare Hills | 32 |
| The Dead: Mazda Wake | 33 |
| The Barnyard | 33 |
| The Grosbeaks | 34 |
| The Streets | 35 |
| The Rows of Cold Trees | 36 |
| Prayer beside a Lamp | 38 |
| Man Regards Eternity in Aging | 39 |
| Eternity | 40 |
| The Passing Night | 41 |
| The Solitude of Glass | 42 |
| Coal: Beginning and End | 43 |
| Liberation | 43 |
| Return of Spring | 44 |
| Bill | 45 |
| The Vanquished | 46 |
| The Victor | 47 |
| A Miner | 48 |
| Vacant Lot | 49 |
| Tragic Love | 49 |
| To the Crucified | 50 |
| O Sun! | 51 |
| November | 52 |
| Genesis | 53 |
| The Bitter Moon | 54 |
| The Deep: A Service for All the Dead | 55 |
| Orange Tree | 57 |
| Song of the Trees | 57 |
| The Goatherds | 58 |
| Bison | 59 |
| Wild Sunflower | 60 |
| Snow-Ghost | 61 |
| The Vigil | 62 |
| Simplex Munditiis | 63 |
| The Moralists | 64 |
| The Realization | 64 |
| To William Dinsmore Briggs Conducting His Seminar | 65 |
| The Invaders | 66 |
| The Castle of Thorns | 66 |
| Apollo and Daphne | 67 |
| The Fable | 67 |
| The Empty Hills | 68 |
| Moonrise | 69 |
| The Fall of Leaves | 70 |
| Inscription for a Graveyard | 70 |
| The Last Visit | 71 |
| For Howard Baker | 72 |
| The Slow Pacific Swell | 72 |
| The Marriage | 74 |
| On a View of Pasadena from the Hills | 75 |
| The Journey | 78 |
| A Vision | 80 |
| To a Young Writer | 82 |
| By the Road to the Air-Base | 83 |
| Elegy on a Young Airedale Bitch Lost Some Years Since in the Salt-Marsh | 84 |
| Midas | 84 |
| Sonnet to the Moon | 85 |
| The Anniversary | 86 |
| Before Disaster | 86 |
| The Prince | 87 |
| Phasellus Ille | 88 |
| Orpheus | 88 |
| On the Death of Senator Thomas J. Walsh | 89 |
| Dedication for a Book of Criticism | 90 |
| A Leave-Taking | 91 |
| On Teaching the Young | 91 |
| Chiron | 91 |
| Heracles | 92 |
| Alcmena | 94 |
| Theseus: A Trilogy | 95 |
| Socrates | 99 |
| To Edwin V. McKenzie | 101 |
| To a Woman on Her Defense of Her Brother Unjustly Convicted of Murder | 102 |
| To David Lamson | 103 |
| John Day, Frontiersman | 104 |
| John Sutter | 105 |
| The California Oaks | 106 |
| On Rereading a Passage from John Muir | 108 |
| The Manzanita | 109 |
| Sir Gawainc and the Green Knight | 109 |
| An October Nocturne | 111 |
| A Spring Serpent | 112 |
| Much in Little | 112 |
| The Cremation | 112 |
| An Elegy | 114 |
| Time and the Garden | 115 |
| To a Portrait of Melville in My Library | 116 |
| A Prayer for My Son | 117 |
| In Praise of California Wines | 118 |
| A Summer Commentary | 119 |
| On the Portrait of a Scholar of the Italian Renaissance | 120 |
| A Dedication in Postscript | 120 |
| A Winter Evening | 121 |
| Summer Noon: 1941 | 122 |
| To a Military Rifle 1942 | 122 |
| For the Opening of the William Dinsmore Briggs Room | 124 |
| Moonlight Alert | 124 |
| Defense of Empire | 125 |
| Night of Battle | 126 |
| An Ode on the Despoilers of Learning in an American University, 1947 | 126 |
| To Herman Melville in 1951 | 128 |
| To the Holy Spirit | 128 |
| A Fragment | 130 |
| A Song in Passing | 130 |
| To the Moon | 131 |
| At the San Francisco Airport | 131 |
| Two Old-Fashioned Songs | 133 |
| To Herbert Dean Meritt | 135 |
| "Aere Caliginoso" | 136 |
| A White Spiritual | 137 |
| The Brink of Darkness | 138 |
| Biographical Note | 153 |
| Note on the Texts | 157 |
| Notes | 159 |
| Index of Titles and First Lines | 162 |