The Beauty & Strength of Nature ...

AT GRASS

   Philip Larkin

The eye can hardly pick them out

   From the cold shade they shelter in,

Till wind distresses tail and mane;

   Then one crops grass, and moves about—

The other seeming to look on—

   And stands anonymous again.

Yet fifteen years ago, perhaps

   Two dozen distances sufficed

To fable them: faint afternoons

   Of Cups and Stakes and Handicaps,

Whereby their names were artificed

   To inlay faded, classic Junes—

Silks at the start: against the sky

   Numbers and parasols: outside,

Squadrons of empty cars, and heat,

   And littered grass: then the long cry

Hanging unhushed till it subside

   To stop-press columns on the street.

Do memories plague their ears like flies?

   They shake their heads. Dusk brims the shadows.

Summer by summer all stole away,

   The starting-gates, the crowds and cries—

All but the unmolesting meadows.

   Almanacked, their names live; they

Have slipped their names, and stand at ease,

   Or gallop for what must be joy,

And not a fieldglass sees them home,

   Or curious stop-watch prophesies:

Only the groom, and the groom’s boy,

   With bridles in the evening come.

THE BEAR

   Robert Frost

 The bear puts both arms around the tree above her

   And draws it down as if it were a lover

 And its choke cherries lips to kiss good-bye,

   Then lets it snap back upright in the sky.

 Her next step rocks a boulder on the wall

   (She's making her cross-country in the fall).

 Her great weight creaks the barbed-wire in its staples

   As she flings over and off down through the maples,

 Leaving on one wire moth a lock of hair.

   Such is the uncaged progress of the bear.

 The world has room to make a bear feel free;

   The universe seems cramped to you and me.

 Man acts more like the poor bear in a cage

    That all day fights a nervous inward rage

 His mood rejecting all his mind suggests.

    He paces back and forth and never rests

 The toe-nail click and shuffle of his feet,

    The telescope at one end of his beat

 And at the other end the microscope,

   Two instruments of nearly equal hope,

 And in conjunction giving quite a spread.

    Or if he rests from scientific tread,

 'Tis only to sit back and sway his head

    Through ninety odd degrees of arc, it seems,

 Between two metaphysical extremes.

    He sits back on his fundamental butt

 With lifted snout and eyes (if any) shut,

    (he almost looks religious but he's not),

 And back and forth he sways from cheek to cheek,

   At one extreme agreeing with one Greek

 At the other agreeing with another Greek

   Which may be thought, but only so to speak.

 A baggy figure, equally pathetic

    When sedentary and when peripatetic.

BIRCHES

   Robert Frost

When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy's been swinging them.

But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.

Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them

Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning

After a rain. They click upon themselves

As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured

As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.

Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells

Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust

Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away

You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,

And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed

So low for long, they never right themselves:

You may see their trunks arching in the woods

Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,

Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair

Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.

But I was going to say when Truth broke in

With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,

I should prefer to have some boy bend them

As he went out and in to fetch the cows--

Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,

Whose only play was what he found himself,

Summer or winter, and could play alone.

One by one he subdued his father's trees

By riding them down over and over again

Until he took the stiffness out of them,

And not one but hung limp, not one was left

For him to conquer. He learned all there was

To learn about not launching out too soon

And so not carrying the tree away

Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise

To the top branches, climbing carefully

With the same pains you use to fill a cup

Up to the brim, and even above the brim.

Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,

Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

And so I dream of going back to be.

It's when I'm weary of considerations,

And life is too much like a pathless wood

Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

Broken across it, and one eye is weeping

From a twig's having lashed across it open.

I'd like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:

I don't know where it's likely to go better.

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

BLUEBELLS OF NEW ENGLAND

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

The roses are a regal troop,

And modest folk the daisies;

But, Bluebells of New England,

To you I give my praises.

To you, fair phantoms in the sun,

Whom merry Spring discovers,

With bluebirds for your laureates,

And honey-bees for lovers.

The south-wind breathes, and lo! You throng

This rugged land of ours:

I think the pale blue clouds of May

Drop down, and turn to flowers!

By cottage doors along the roads

You show your winsome faces,

And, like the spectre lady, haunt

The lonely woodland places.

All night your eyes are closed in sleep,

Kept fresh for day’s adorning;

Such simple faith as yours can see

God’s coming in the morning!

You lead me by your holiness

To pleasant ways of duty;

You set my thoughts to melody,

You fill me with your beauty.

Long may the heavens give you rain,

The sunshine its caresses,

Long may the woman that I love

Entwine you in her tresses!

CALIFORNIA POPPY

   Ina Coolbrith (1842-1928)

Thy satin vesture richer is than looms

Of Orient weave for raiment of her kings.

Not dyes of old Tyre, not precious things

Regathered from the long forgotten tombs

Of buried empires, not the iris plumes

That wave upon the tropic’s myriad wings,

Not all proud Sheba’s queenly offerings,

Could match the golden marvel of thy blooms.

For thou art nurtured from the treasure veins

Of this fair land; thy golden rootlets sup

Her sands of gold – of gold thy petals spun.

Her golden glory, thou! On hills and plains

Lifting, exultant, every kingly cup,

Brimmed with the golden vintage of the sun.

CANIS MAJOR

  Robert Frost

 The great Overdog

 That heavenly beast

 With a star in one eye

 Gives a leap in the east.

 He dances upright

 All the way to the west

 And never once drops

 On his forefeet to rest.

 I'm a poor underdog,

 But to-night I will bark

 With the great Overdog

 That romps through the dark.

CATTLE COUNTRY

   Emily Pauline Johnson

Up the dusk-enfolded prairie,

   Foot-falls, soft and sly,

Velvet cushioned, wild and wary,

   Then—the coyote’s cry.

Rush of hoofs, and roar and rattle,

   Beasts of blood and breed,

Twenty thousand frightened cattle,

   Then—the wild stampede.

Pliant lasso circling wider

   In the frenzied flight—

Loping horse and cursing rider,

   Plunging through the night.

Rim of dawn the darkness losing

   Trail of blackened soil;

Perfume of the sage brush oozing

   On the air like oil.

Foothills to the Rockies lifting

   Brown, and blue, and green,

Warm Alberta sunlight drifting

   Over leagues between.

That’s the country of the ranges,

   Plain and prairie land,

And the God who never changes

   Holds it in His hand.

A CITY IN THE SEA

   Edgar Allan Poe (1831)

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne

   In a strange city lying alone

Far down within the dim West,

   Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

Have gone to their eternal rest.

   There shrines and palaces and towers

(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)

   Resemble nothing that is ours.

Around, by lifting winds forgot,

   Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy heaven come down

   On the long night-time of that town;

But light from out the lurid sea

   Streams up the turrets silently –

Gleams up the pinnacles far and free—

   Up domes—up spires—up kingly halls—

Up fanes—up Babylon-like walls—

   Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers

Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers—

   Up many and many a marvelous shrine

Whose wreathed friezes intertwine

   The viol, the violet, and the vine.

Resignedly beneath the sky

   The melancholy waters lie.

So blend the turrets and shadows there

   That all seem pendulous in air,

While from a proud tower in the town

   Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves

   Yawn level with the luminous waves;

But not the riches there that lie

   In each idol’s diamond eye—

Not the gaily-jewelled dead

   Tempt the waters from their bed;

For no ripples curl, alas!

   Along that wilderness of glass—

No swellings tell that winds may be

   Upon some far-off happier sea—

No heavings hint that winds have been

   On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air!

   The wave – there is a movement there!

As if the towers had thrust aside,

   In slightly sinking, the dull time—

As if their tops had feebly given

   A void within the filmy Heaven.

The waves have now a redder glow—

   The hours are breathing faint and low—

And when, amid no earthly moans,

   Down, down that town shall settle hence,

Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,

   Shall do it reverence.

A CONSERVATIVE

  Charlotte Perkins S. Gilman (1860-)

  The garden beds I wandered by

   One bright and cheerful morn,

When I found a new-fledged butterfly,

   A-sitting on a thorn,

A black and crimson butterfly

  All doleful and forlorn.

  I thought that life could have no sting

   To infant butterflies,

So I gazed on this unhappy thing

   With wonder and surprise.

While sadly with his waving wing

  He wiped his weeping eyes.

  Said I, “What can the matter be?

   Why weepest thou so sore?

With garden fair and sunlight free

   And flowers in goodly store,”—

But he only turned away from me

  And burst into a roar.

  Cried he, “My legs are thin and few

   Where once I had a swarm!

Soft fussy fur—a joy to view—

   Once kept my body warm,

Before these flapping wing-things grew,

  To hamper and deform!”

  At that outrageous bug I shot

   The fury of mine eye;

Said I, in scorn all burning hot,

  In rage and anger high,

“You ignominious idiot!

  Those wings are made to fly!”

  “I do not want to fly,” said he,

   “I only want to squirm!”

And he drooped his wings dejectedly,

   But still his voice was firm:

   “I do not want to be a fly!

I want to be a worm!”

  O yesterday of unknown lack

   To-day of unknown bliss!

I left my fool in red and black;

   The last I saw was this,--

The creature madly climbing back

  Into his chrysalis.

THE COW

   Robert Louis Stevenson

The friendly cow all red and white,

   I love with all my heart:

She gives me cream with all her might,

   To eat with apple-tart.

She wanders lowing here and there,

   And yet she cannot stray,

All in the pleasant open air,

   The pleasant light of day;

And blown by all the winds that pass

   And wet with all the showers,

She walks among the meadow grass

   And eats the meadow flowers.

COYOTE

   Bret Harte
 

Blown out of the prairie in twilight and dew,

Half bold and half timid, yet lazy all through;

Loath ever to leave, and yet fearful to stay,

He limps in the clearing, an outcast in gray

A shade on the stubble, a ghost by the wall,

Now leaping, now limping, now risking a fall,

Lop-eared and large-jointed, but ever alway

A thoroughly vagabond outcast in gray.

Here, Carlo, old fellow, —he 's one of your kind, —

Go, seek him, and bring him in out of the wind.

What! snarling, my Carlo! So even dogs may

Deny their own kin in the outcast in gray

Well, take what you will—though it be on the sly,

Marauding or begging,

I shall not ask why,

But will call it a dole, just to help on his way

A four-footed friar in orders of gray!

DAFFODILS

   William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

A DAY FOR WANDERING

   Clinton Scollard (1860-)

I set apart a day for wandering;

I heard the woodlands ring,

The hidden white-throat sing,

And the harmonic West,

Beyond a far hill-crest,

Touch its Aeolian string.

Remote from all the brawl and bruit of men,

The iron tongue of Trade,

I followed the clear calling of a wren

Deep to the bosom of a sheltered glade,

Where interwoven branches spread a shade

Of soft cool beryl like the evening seas

Unruffled by the breeze.

And there—and there—

I watched the maiden-hair,

The pale blue iris-grass,

The water-spider in its pause and pass

Upon a pool that like a mirror was.

I took for confidant

The diligent ant

Threading the clover and the sorrel aisles;

For me were all the smiles

Of the sequestered blossoms there abloom—

Chalice and crown and plume;

I drank the ripe rich attars blurred and blent,

And won---Content!

THE DESPOT

   Edith Nesbit (1858-1924)

The garden mould was damp and chill,

Winter had had his brutal will

Since over all the year's content

His devastating legions went.

Then Spring's bright banners came: there woke

Millions of little growing folk

Who thrilled to know the winter done,

Gave thanks, and strove towards the sun.

Not so the elect; reserved, and slow

To trust a stranger-sun and grow,

They hesitated, cowered and hid

Waiting to see what others did.

Yet even they, a little, grew,

Put out prim leaves to day and dew,

And lifted level formal heads

In their appointed garden beds.

The gardener came: he coldly loved

The flowers that lived as he approved,

That duly, decorously grew

As he, the despot, meant them to.

He saw the wildlings flower more brave

And bright than any cultured slave;

Yet, since he had not set them there,

He hated them for being fair.

So he uprooted, one by one

The free things that had loved the sun,

The happy, eager, fruitful seeds

That had not known that they were weeds.

EARTH VOICES

   Bliss Carman (1861-1929)

I heard the spring wind whisper

   Above the brushwood fire,

"The world is made forever

   Of transport and desire.

"I am the breath of being,

   The primal urge of things;

I am the whirl of star dust,

   I am the lift of wings.

"I am the splendid impulse

   That comes before the thought,

The joy and exaltation

   Wherein the life is caught.

"Across the sleeping furrows

   I call the buried seed,

And blade and bud and blossom

   Awaken at my need.

"Within the dying ashes

   I blow the sacred spark,

And make the hearts of lovers

   To leap against the dark."

I heard the spring light whisper

   Above the dancing stream,

"The world is made forever

   In likeness of a dream.

"I am the law of planets,

   I am the guide of man;

The evening and the morning

   Are fashioned to my plan.

"I tint the dawn with crimson,

   I tinge the sea with blue;

My track is in the desert,

   My trail is in the dew.

"I paint the hills with color,

   And in my magic dome

I light the star of evening

   To steer the traveller home.

"Within the house of being,

   I feed the lamp of truth

With tales of ancient wisdom

   And prophecies of youth."

I heard the spring rain murmur

   Above the roadside flower,

"The world is made forever

   In melody and power.

"I keep the rhythmic measure

   That marks the steps of time,

And all my toil is fashioned

   To symmetry and rhyme.

"I plow the untitled upland,

   I ripe the seeding grass,

And fill the leafy forest

   With music as I pass,

"I hew the raw, rough granite

   To loveliness of line,

And when my work is finished,

   Behold, it is divine!

"I am the master-builder

   In whom the ages trust.

I lift the lost perfection

   To blossom from the dust.

Then Earth to them made answer

   As with a slow refrain

Born of the blended voices

   Of wind and sun and rain,

'This is the law of being

   That links the threefold chain:

The life we give to beauty

   Returns to us again."

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