Famous Nature Poems - Page 3
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41. Winter Woods
Famous Poem
The winter wood is like a strong old man,
Grizzled, rugged, and gray,
With long white locks tattered by many storms.
He lifts gnarled arms defiant of the blasts,
And rears his old head proudly
Under the menace of the winter sky.Featured Shared StoryNo Stories yet, You can be the first!
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42. The Tyger
Famous Poem
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?Featured Shared StoryNo Stories yet, You can be the first!
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43. Spring Fever
Famous Poem
When a feller feels a longing
For the medder in his breast.
When the robins north are thronging,
Where they haste to build their nest.
When the frogs peep in the puddle
Where I love to hear them sing,
Then my brain is in a muddle,
For I know it's really spring.
When the double windows smother
Us until we want more air;
When a protest comes and mother
Can't endure them longer there;
When we ope the cellar shutters,
Kitchen doors are on the swing,
Clean the cisterns, fix the gutters―
Then I know its truly spring.
When the wild ducks and geese are going
Northward, "dragging" as they fly;
When the streams are overflowing,
And a rainbow gilds the sky;
When the plowman turns the stubble
Where the bluebirds sweetly sing,
When comes carpet-beating trouble,
Then I'm confident it's spring.
When the jack-torch men are spearing
Silver suckers in the brook,
And the angleworms appearing.
Seem quite anxious for my hook;
When the mellow sunlights beckon
Till the mill wheel starts to sing,
Then's the time the fish, I reckon,
'Spect to see me―Come! It's spring!Featured Shared StoryNo Stories yet, You can be the first!
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44. Memory
Famous Poem
My mind lets go a thousand things
Like dates of wars and deaths of kings,
And yet recalls the very hour--
'T was noon by yonder village tower,
And on the last blue noon in May--
The wind came briskly up this way,
Crisping the brook beside the road;
Then, pausing here, set down its load
Of pine-scents, and shook listlessly
Two petals from that wild-rose tree.Featured Shared StoryNo Stories yet, You can be the first!
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45. Vision
Famous Poem
I came to the mountains for beauty
And I find here the toiling folk,
On sparse little farms in the valleys,
Wearing their days like a yoke.
White clouds fill the valleys at morning,
They are round as great billows at sea,
And roll themselves up to the hill-tops
Still round as great billows can be.
The mists fill the valleys at evening,
They are blue as the smoke in the fall,
And spread all the hills with a tenuous scarf
That touches the hills not at all.
These lone folk have looked on them daily,
Yet I see in their faces no light.
Oh, how can I show them the mountains
That are round them by day and by night?Featured Shared StoryNo Stories yet, You can be the first!
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46. My Heart's In The Highlands
Famous Poem
Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.
My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;
Chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.
Farewell to the mountains, high-cover'd with snow,
Farewell to the straths and green vallies below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods,
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.
My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;
Chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.Featured Shared StoryNo Stories yet, You can be the first!
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47. June In Maine
Famous Poem
Beautiful, beautiful summer!
Odorous, exquisite June!
All the sweet roses in blossom,
All the sweet birdies in tune.
Dew on the meadows at sunset;
Gems on the meadows at morn;
Melody hushing the evening;
Melody greeting the dawn.
All the dim aisles of the forest
Ringing and thrilling with song;
Music—a flood-tide of music—
Poured the green valleys along.
Rapturous creatures of beauty.
Winging their way through the sky,
Heavenward warble their praises—
Mount our thanksgivings as high?
Lo! when a bird is delighted,
His ecstacy prompts him to soar;
The greater, the fuller his rapture,
His songs of thanksgiving the more.
See how the winds from the mountains
Sweep over meadows most fair;
The green fields are tossed like the ocean,
Are shadowed by clouds in the air.
For now fleecy shadows are chasing
The sunshine from woodland and vale,
As white clouds come gathering slowly,
Blown up by the sweet-scented gale
Birds and the gales and the flowers
Call us from study away,
Out to the fields where the mowers
Soon will be making the hay.
Buttercups, daisies, and clover,
Roses, sweet-briar, and fern,
Mingle their breath on the breezes—
Who from such wooing could turn?
Out! to the heath and the mountain,
Where mid the fern and the brake,
Under the pines and the spruces,
Fragrant the bower we will make.
Ravishing voices of Nature,
Ye conquer—and never too soon—
We yield to thy luscious embraces,
Thou odorous, exquisite June!Featured Shared StoryNo Stories yet, You can be the first!
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48. What The Birds Teach Us
Famous Poem
November now is here,
With skies of leaden hue,
And gloomy days and drear,
And winds that pierce us through.
And on the hedge the rose,
With leaves of tender green,
No more in beauty grows,
And frost and snow are seen.
But still the Birds contrive,
By hardship unsubdued,
To keep themselves alive,
And keenly seek their food.
And thus they teach us still,
However dark the day,
"That where there is a Will
There always is a Way."Featured Shared StoryNo Stories yet, You can be the first!
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49. The Sandpiper
Famous Poem
Across the lonely beach we flit,
One little sandpiper and I,
And fast I gather, bit by bit,
The scattered driftwood, bleached and dry.
The wild waves reach their hands for it,
The wild wind raves, the tide runs high,
As up and down the beach we flit,
One little sandpiper and I.
Above our heads the sullen clouds
Scud, black and swift, across the sky;
Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds
Stand out the white lighthouses high.
Almost as far as eye can reach
I see the close-reefed vessels fly,
As fast we flit along the beach,
One little sandpiper and I.
I watch him as he skims along,
Uttering his sweet and mournful cry;
He starts not at my fitful song,
Nor flash of fluttering drapery.
He has no thought of any wrong,
He scans me with a fearless eye;
Stanch friends are we, well tried and strong,
The little sandpiper and I.
Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night,
When the loosed storm breaks furiously?
My driftwood fire will burn so bright!
To what warm shelter canst thou fly?
I do not fear for thee, though wroth
The tempest rushes through the sky;
For are we not God's children both,
Thou, little sandpiper, and I?Featured Shared StoryNo Stories yet, You can be the first!
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50. No Songs In Winter
Famous Poem
The sky is gray as gray may be,
There is no bird upon the bough,
There is no leaf on vine or tree.
In the Neponset marshes now
Willow-stems, rosy in the wind,
Shiver with hidden sense of snow.
So too 't is winter in my mind,
No light-winged fancy comes and stays:
A season churlish and unkind.
Slow creep the hours, slow creep the days,
The black ink crusts upon the pen--
Just wait till bluebirds, wrens, and jays
And golden orioles come again!Featured Shared StoryNo Stories yet, You can be the first!
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51. The Mountain
Famous Poem
The mountain sat upon the plain
In his eternal chair,
His observation omnifold,
His inquest everywhere.
The seasons prayed around his knees,
Like children round a sire:
Grandfather of the days is he,
Of dawn the ancestor.Featured Shared StoryNo Stories yet, You can be the first!
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52. Spring
Famous Poem
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowersFeatured Shared StoryNo Stories yet, You can be the first!
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53. Pray To What Earth
Famous Poem
Pray to what earth does this sweet cold belong,
Which asks no duties and no conscience?
The moon goes up by leaps, her cheerful path
In some far summer stratum of the sky,
While stars with their cold shine bedot her way.
The fields gleam mildly back upon the sky,
And far and near upon the leafless shrubs
The snow dust still emits a silver light.
Under the hedge, where drift banks are their screen,
The titmice now pursue their downy dreams,
As often in the sweltering summer nights
The bee doth drop asleep in the flower cup,
When evening overtakes him with his load.
By the brooksides, in the still, genial night,
The more adventurous wanderer may hear
The crystals shoot and form, and winter slow
Increase his rule by gentlest summer meansFeatured Shared StoryNo Stories yet, You can be the first!
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54. A Narrow Fellow In The Grass
Famous Poem
A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him,--did you not,
His notice sudden is.
The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.
He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,
Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun,--
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.
Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;
But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.Featured Shared StoryNo Stories yet, You can be the first!
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55. Dear March - Come In -
Famous Poem
Dear March—Come in—
How glad I am—
I hoped for you before—
Put down your Hat—
You must have walked—
How out of Breath you are—
Dear March, how are you, and the Rest—
Did you leave Nature well—
Oh March, Come right upstairs with me—
I have so much to tell—
I got your Letter, and the Birds—
The Maples never knew that you were coming—
I declare - how Red their Faces grew—
But March, forgive me—
And all those Hills you left for me to Hue—
There was no Purple suitable—
You took it all with you—
Who knocks? That April—
Lock the Door—
I will not be pursued—
He stayed away a Year to call
When I am occupied—
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come
That blame is just as dear as Praise
And Praise as mere as Blame—Featured Shared StoryNo Stories yet, You can be the first!
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56. The Fish
Famous Poem
I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn’t fight.
He hadn’t fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
—the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly—
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
—It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
—if you could call it a lip—
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels—until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.Featured Shared StoryNo Stories yet, You can be the first!
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57. A Winter Blue Jay
Famous Poem
Crisply the bright snow whispered,
Crunching beneath our feet;
Behind us as we walked along the parkway,
Our shadows danced,
Fantastic shapes in vivid blue.
Across the lake the skaters
Flew to and fro,
With sharp turns weaving
A frail invisible net.
In ecstasy the earth
Drank the silver sunlight;
In ecstasy the skaters
Drank the wine of speed;
In ecstasy we laughed
Drinking the wine of love.
Had not the music of our joy
Sounded its highest note?
But no,
For suddenly, with lifted eyes you said,
“Oh look!”
There, on the black bough of a snow flecked maple,
Fearless and gay as our love,
A bluejay cocked his crest!
Oh who can tell the range of joy
Or set the bounds of beauty?Featured Shared StoryNo Stories yet, You can be the first!
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