Famous Nature Poems - Page 2

THE steadfast coursing of the stars,
The waves that ripple to the shore,
The vigorous trees which year by year
Spread upwards more and more;

The jewel forming in the mine,
The snow that falls so soft and light,
The rising and the setting sun,
The growing glooms of night;

All natural things both live and move
In natural peace that is their own;
Only in our disordered life
Almost is she unknown.

She is not rest, nor sleep, nor death;
Order and motion ever stand
To carry out her firm behests
As guards at her right hand.

And something of her living force
Fashions the lips when Christians say
To Him Whose strength sustains the world,
"Give us Thy Peace, we pray!"

I stood beside a hill
Smooth with new-laid snow,
A single star looked out
From the cold evening glow.

There was no other creature
That saw what I could see—
I stood and watched the evening star
As long as it watched me.

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
Never mind faded forests, Austin,
Never mind silent fields -
Here is a little forest,
Whose leaf is ever green;
Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;
In its unfading flowers
I hear the bright bee hum:
Prithee, my brother,
Into my garden come!

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,  
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless  
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,  
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;      
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells  
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,      
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?  
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,  
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,  
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook      
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep  
Steady thy laden head across a brook;  
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,      
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?  
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,  
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn  
Among the river sallows, borne aloft      
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;  
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft  
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;      
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.