1630 Nature poems

To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts Of the last bitter hour come like a blight Over thy spirit, and sad images Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;— Go forth, under the open sky, and list To Nature’s teachings, while from all around— Earth and her waters, and the depths of air— Comes a still voice— Yet a few days, and thee The all-beholding sun shall see no more In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground, Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go To mix for ever with the elements, To be a brother to the insensible rock And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould. Yet not to thine eternal resting-place Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings, The powerful of the earth—the wise, the good, Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, All in one mighty sepulchre.   The hills Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,—the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between; The venerable woods—rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, Old Ocean’s gray and melancholy waste,— Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, Are shining on the sad abodes of death, Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread The globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom.—Take the wings Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness, Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound, Save his own dashings—yet the dead are there: And millions in those solitudes, since first The flight of years began, have laid them down In their last sleep—the dead reign there alone. So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw In silence from the living, and no friend Take note of thy departure? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glide away, the sons of men, The youth in life’s green spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron and maid, The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man— Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, By those, who in their turn shall follow them. So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, which moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

The grey sky, lighter & darker greys, lights between & delicate lavenders also blue-greys in smaller strokes, & swashes of mauve-grey on the Hudson— openings of light to the blue oblong off-center where the door to the warehouse shows— the larger smearings darkening deep into blues So alight that sky, late August, early evening, I had to gasp at it, stand there hardly moving to breathe it,       using whatever my body gave me, at that moment       attending to it, thinking: Turner, he should have seen it, he would have given it back to us, not let it die away And that other evening, walking down Bank Street from marketing, the sky fiery over the river, luminous but hot in its flowering also, rich in color as Venice seen by Guardi—more aflame even, the sky moving in a pulse, its fire breathing in a pulse verging on danger—mane of a lioness affronted. That brilliance—the eye of the lion filled to the lids with flame And his eyes, Turner's, that bright grey eye at seventy-six, "brilliant as the eye of a child" who grew his thumbnail in the shape of an eagle's claw, the better to use it in painting In Kirby Lonsdale, Yorkshire, where Turner first drew mountain-landscapes, I found Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell

There is another way to enter an apple: a worm’s way. The small, round door closes behind her. The world and all its necessities ripen around her like a room. In the sweet marrow of a bone, the maggot does not remember the wingspread of the mother, the green shine of her body, nor even the last breath of the dying deer. I, too, have forgotten how I came here, breathing this sweet wind, drinking rain, encased by the limits of what I can imagine and by a husk of stars.

There was this bear cam on the Internet. It was pointed at a place called Katmai National Park, Alaska. A few years ago my friend sent me a link to it. I would watch it sometimes but I never saw any bears. Maybe it was bad luck because my friend said she saw bears. All I ever saw was the enormous river rushing and the tall pines in the background doing nothing. I mean, that was OK, of course. I loved the sound of the river and wind in trees and the sheer thrill that such a sublime nothingness could be witnessed like this. But I wanted to see a bear. It seemed even more thrilling to be typing in a cubicle and suddenly out of nowhere there’s a bear on your screen that maybe 50 other people in the world catch a glimpse of. Maybe they are on a break from Facebook or filling out a spreadsheet and BOOM, a bear. So I thought while I was writing this that I would just check the bear cam online and sure enough a fat bear is in the middle of the river eating a salmon right there in the Katmai National Park. I get up from my desk and tell my colleagues “You guys, come here!” and my colleagues come in my office but by the time they run in the bear crosses the river, or pixelated screen or whatever, salmon in his jaws and the only thing there is the river and trees and they say, “Sandra, this is boring,” and walk back to their own offices.

They call the mountain Carlos because it is brown, though its purple slopes at dusk suggest other names. Those who name it have to brand the earth with something they know— a name, a face, even the heat that says "I know Carlos and he is the mountain. I am going to cover his eyes in light." They call its peak Carlos because it is the sharpest feature on the face that stares south, watching people cross the border, pausing to catch their breath and meet the cliffs of Carlos because he is there. When they ascend the canyons inside the face, Carlos shifts and the climbers discover what he has done. The moving earth changes everything and they are forced to stop playing the game of naming a mountain that keeps touching the sun.

They inherit a packet of earth hear its coins clank in a tin box push them aside reap thick strands of night from thinning black hair. They climb the staircase clenching branches of pens filled with ducks’ blood and follow the butcher’s bed into this room— goose feathers thorning out of their eyes. They promise to never look down again down is just a speck of globe dust just coins clanking in the tin box.

We come gnawed by need on hands and knees. As a creature (nosing) grubble-seeks a spring. As bendy-spined as bandy snakes through saltshrub yaupon needle-brake. For darkling green; for thorn-surround. This absorbing quaggy crample-ground. Of   briar-canes (intervolved with kudzu-mesh) and mold. Of   these convoluted vines we grasp to suck. To taste the pith — the lumen the cell-sap pulse. To try to know some (soursharp) something about something. Lumen is as lumen does. ‘A little room for turmoil to grow lucid in.’

from Sonnets, Third Series IV Thin little leaves of wood fern, ribbed and toothed, Long curved sail needles of the green pitch pine, With common sandgrass, skirt the horizon line, And over these the incorruptible blue! Here let me gently lie and softly view All world asperities, lightly touched and smoothed As by his gracious hand, the great Bestower. What though the year be late? some colors run Yet through the dry, some links of melody. Still let me be, by such, assuaged and soothed And happier made, as when, our schoolday done, We hunted on from flower to frosty flower, Tattered and dim, the last red butterfly, Or the old grasshopper molasses-mouthed.

From King Arthur COMUS Your hay it is mow'd, and your corn is reap'd; Your barns will be full, and your hovels heap'd: Come, my boys, come; Come, my boys, come; And merrily roar out Harvest Home. CHORUS Come, my boys, come; Come, my boys, come; And merrily roar out Harvest Home. MAN We ha' cheated the parson, we'll cheat him agen, For why should a blockhead ha' one in ten? One in ten, One in ten, For why should a blockhead ha' one in ten? For prating so long like a book-learn'd sot, Till pudding and dumplin burn to pot, Burn to pot, Burn to pot, Till pudding and dumplin burn to pot. CHORUS Burn to pot, Burn to pot, Till pudding and dumplin burn to pot. We'll toss off our ale till we canno' stand, And Hoigh for the honour of Old England: Old England, Old England, And Hoigh for the honour of Old England. CHORUS Old England, Old England, And Hoigh for the honour of Old England.

I had not thought of violets late, The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet In wistful April days, when lovers mate And wander through the fields in raptures sweet. The thought of violets meant florists' shops, And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine; And garish lights, and mincing little fops And cabarets and soaps, and deadening wines. So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed, I had forgot wide fields; and clear brown streams; The perfect loveliness that God has made,— Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams. And now—unwittingly, you've made me dream Of violets, and my soul's forgotten gleam.