Nature

Stanza
Often rebuked,yet always back returning
To those first feelings that were born with me,
And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning
For idle dreams of things which cannot be.
Today I will seek not the shadowy region;
Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear;
And visions rising,legion after legion,
Bring the unreal world too strangely near.
I'll walk,but not in old heroic traces,
And not in paths of high morality,
And not among the half-distinguishe'd faces,
The clouded forms of long-past history.
I'll walk when my own nature would be leading:
It vexes me to choose another guide:
Where the grey flocks in ferny glens are feeding,
Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side.
Emily Bronte

Nature
Nature is the living,visible garment of God,
and earth,with her thousand voices,praises God.
Flowers are the poetry of the earth,
as stars are the poetry of heaven,
and a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work
of the stars.
Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature-
daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it.
Rocks,trees,wind on our cheeks
The solid earth!
All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
whose body nature is, and God the soul.

God The Artist
God,when you thought of a pine tree,
How did you think of a star?
How did you dream of a damson West
Crossed by an inky bar?
How did you think of a clear brown pool
Where flocks of shadows are?
God,when you thought of a cobweb,
How did you think of dew?
How did you know a spider's house
Had shingles,bright and new?
How did you know we human folk
Would love them as we do?
God,when you patterned a bird song,
Flung on a silver string,
How did you know the ecstacy
That crystal call would bring?
How did you think of a bubbling throat
And a darling speckled wing?
God,when you chisled a raindrop,
How did you think of a stem
Bearing a lovely satin leaf
To hold the tiny gem?
How did you know a million drops
Would deck the mornings hem?
Why did you mate the moonlit night
With the honeysuckle vines?
How did you know Madeira bloom
Distilled ecstatic wines?
How did you weave the velvet dusk
Where tangled perfumes are?
God,when you thought of a pine tree
How did you think of a star?
-Angela Morgan-

Flowers And Tall Stalked Grasses
Flowers and tall stalked grasses,
and a bee,and azure,
blaze of the meridian
The time will come,the Lord will ask his prodigal son
"In your life on earth were you happy?"
And i'll forget it all,
only remembering those meadow paths amoung tall spears of grass,
and clasped against the knees of mercy
I will not respond choked off by tears of joy

The Gentle Gardener
I'd like to leave but daffodils to mark my little
way,
I'd leave but tulips red and white behind me as
I stray
I'd like to pass away from earth and feel I'd
left behind
But roses and forget-me-nots for all who come
to find.
I'd like to sow the barren spots with all the
flowers of earth,
To leave a path where those who come should
find but gentle mirth;
And when at last I'm called upon to join the
heavenly throng
I'd like to feel along my way I'd left no sign
of wrong.
And yet the cares are many and the hours of
toil are few;
There is not time enough on earth for all I'd
like to do;
But, having lived and having toiled, I'd like the
world to find
Some little touch of beauty that my soul had
left behind.
-E.A.Guest-

So come forth into the light of things,
let nature be your teacher.
Speak to the earth and it shall teach thee.
Nature will bear the closest inspection.
She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf
and take an insect view of it's plain.
Touch the earth,love the earth,honor the earth,
her plains,her valleys,and the seas;
Rest your spirit in her solitary places.
God,I can push the grass apart,
and lay my finger on thy heart.

Daffodils
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.
Continous 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 be but 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.
-W.Wordsworth-

Results and Roses
The man who wants a garden fair,
Or small or very big,
With flowers growing here and there,
Must bend his back and dig.
The things are mighty few on earth
That wishes can attain.
Whate're we want of any worth
We've got to work to gain.
It matters not what goal you seek
Its secret here reposes:
You've got to dig from week to week
To get Results or Roses.
-E.Guest-

The Darkening Garden
Where have all the colours gone?
Red of roses,green of grass,
Brown of tree-trunk,gold of cowslip,
Pink of poppy,blue of cornflower,
Who among you saw them pass?
They have gone to make the sunset
Broidered on the western sky,
All the colours of our garden,
Woven into a lovely curtain,
O'er the bed where Day doth lie.
-Anon-

To Spring
O thou, with dewy locks who lookest down
Thro' the clear windows of the morning, turn
Thine angel eyes upon our western isle,
Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring!
-W.Blake-

At Sunrise
Flowers rejoice when night is done,
Lift their heads to greet the sun;
Sweetest looks and odours raise,
In a silent hymn of praise.
So my heart would turn away
From the darkness to the day;
Lying open in God's sight
Like a flower in the light.
-Henry Van Dyke-

Petals
Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart;
The end lost in dream,
They float past our view,
We only watch their glad, early start.
Freighted with hope,
Crimsoned with joy,
We scatter the leaves of our opening rose;
Their widening scope,
Their distant employ,
We shall never know, And the stream as it flows
Sweeps them away,
Each one is gone
Ever beyond into infinite ways.
We alone stay
While years hurry on,
The flowers fared forth, though it's fragrance still stays.
- A.Lowell-

Winter Love
Let us have winter loving that the heart
May be in peace and ready to partake
Of the slow pleasure spring would wish to hurry
Or that in summer harshly would awake,
And let us fall apart, O gladly weary,
The white skin shaken like a winter snowflake.
-E.Jennings-

Dawn
An angel, robed in spotless white,
Bent down and kissed the sleeping Night.
Night woke to blush; the sprite was gone.
Men saw the blush and called it Dawn.
-Paul L. Dunbar-

Thine Eyes Still Shined
Thine eyes still shined for me,though far
I lonely roved the land or sea:
As I behold yon evening star,
Which yet beholds not me.
This morn I climbed the misty hill
And roamed the pastures through;
How danced thy form before my path
Amidst the deep-eyed dew.
And showed his side of flame;
When the rosebud ripened to the rose,
In both I read thy name.
-Emerson-

The Whole Duty Of A Poem
A poem should be, as our best ever are,
Golden of heart like a rose or a star.
A poem should be, like the brook that you hear
Sing down the mountainside, lovely and clear.
Yet in it's music a poem should hold
That which is felt but may never be told.
-Arthur Gutterman-

Dear Land of All My Love
Long as thine art shall love true love,
Long as thy science truth shall know,
Long as thine eagle harms no dove,
Long as thy law by law shall grow,
Long as thy God is God above,
Thy brother every man below,
So long, dear land of all my love,
Thy name shall shine, thy fame shall glow.
-Sidney Lanier-

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