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53 Poems: Poetry and Nature
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Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894
The Wind
Gather Ye Roses
The Moon
Over the Land is April
The Swing
Windy Nights
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Lines Composed In A Wood On A Windy Day by Anne Bronte, 1848
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Who can see the wind? by Christina Rosetti, 1893
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Daniel Beaudry, Breath
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Wendell Berry, 1934- For the Future
The Peace of Wild Things, 1985
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Karen I Shragg, Think Like a Tree
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William Shakespeare Sonnets
XVIII – Shall I Compare thee to a summer’s day?
XIX – Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paw
XXIX - When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
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William Wordsworth
Lines Written in Early Spring, 1798
Daffodils, 1804
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Walt Whitman, When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer, 1892
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Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886. A bird came down the walk
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Lord Byron, She Walks in Beauty, 1875
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William Blake
The Tyger, 1794
Quote, 1799
excerpt from Auguries of Innocence, 1803
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Shel Silverstein, The Bear, The Fire, and The Snow, 1996
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Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, Ozymandias
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William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939, The Second Coming
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John Masefield, Sea Fever, 1902
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Langston Hughes, 1902-1967, The Negro Speaks of Rivers
12
Robert Frost
Fire and Ice, 1923
Nothing Gold Can Stay, 1923
Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening, 1923
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Martin Carter, 1927-1997
Bitter Wood, 1988
In A Small City at Dusk
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Arthur J. Stewart, Fossils
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e.e.cummings, In Just, 1920
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Edna St. Vincent Millay
Spring, 1921
Wild Swans, 1921
Recuerdo, 1922
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Mary Oliver, Wild Geese, 1986
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Nancy Wood, Solitude, 1993
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Adrienne Rich, What Kind of Times are These, 1995
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan, 1797
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Andrew Marvell, The Garden, c. 1660
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Robert Pinksy, 1940- . City Elegies, I. The Day Dreamers
Sharon Olds, 1942- . High School Senior, 1996
Billy Collines, Litany, 2002
Curtis L. Crisler, A Gary Poem (Chocolate City), 2007
Issa, 1763-1827, 5 Haiku translated by Robert Haas
Mary Oliver, 1935 Alligator Poem
Charles Simic, 2009 The Melon
DRAFT Nature Poetry Collection
Here is a collection of poems. Please suggest other favorite poems that we can add to the collection.
Big Ideas - Suggestions:
Nature and Man
Nature in the City
Nature – Friend and Foe
Essential Questions - Suggestions:
Why do poets use nature to reflect on humans?
Does poetry help us enjoy and connect with nature, with being human?
How do our senses help us know and understand?
Why do we use poetry to tell the human story?
What does the juxtaposition of humans and the non-human world reveal about humans?
Focusing Questions
Why do writers use images of nature in similes, metaphors, personification, symbolism?
What is the difference between poetry and prose?
How does poetry affect us differently than prose?
How does repetition affect understanding? How does alliteration…
Knowledge: Key features of poetry include:
 Sound effects – repetition, alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhythm, rhyme;
o I had a linguistics professor at Queens College explain that when a poet uses “e’s” we smile;
when a poet uses “o’s” and “u’s” it sounds serious and heavy.
 Meaning – simile, metaphor, personification, symbolism, juxtaposition, paradox
Vocabulary: See 6, 7, 8 Poetry Vocabulary. pros·o·dy/ˈpräsədē/ Noun. : the study of versification; especially : the
systematic study of metrical structure. 2: a particular system, theory, or style of versification
3: the rhythmic and intonational aspect of language
Things to Do:
Brainstorm – Nature. Create a Found Poem, as a class
I remember the first time
I was 11 when I saw my first shooting star
I remember when I was tumbled by a wave and thought I would die
The sun burnt my skin so badly, my face peeled off
Nature is my enemy/friend because
I’m allergic to bees; I could die if I’m stung.
Floods in my country destroyed my home.
Memorize a poem – sign up to be part of the Green Magnet Nature Poetry Slam
Write poems about nature/the environment
Compare and contrast these poems
Poetry Hunts – have students hunt through the anthologies for poems they like about nature
Read Alouds – have student read aloud the poems they’ve found
Enduring Understandings. Students will understand:
 The cultural, social and economic climate in which art is made.
 The value of art as a means of making connections to the world.
 That reading poetry can create opportunities for communication and self-expression.
 Poets use language to shape ideas and create new understandings.
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6 Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson from A Child’s Garden of Verses, 1885
The Wind by Robert Louis Stevenson
I saw you toss the kites on high
And blow the birds about the sky;
And all around I heard you pass,
Like ladies’ skirts across the grass—
O wind, a-blowing all day long,
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O wind, that sings so loud a song!
I saw the different things you did,
But always you yourself you hid.
I felt you push, I heard you call,
I could not see yourself at all—
O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song
O you that are so strong and cold,
O blower, are you young or old?
Are you a beast of field and tree,
Or just a stronger child than me?
O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song:
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Gather Ye Roses by Robert Louis Stevenson
Gather ye roses while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying;
A world where beauty fleets away
Is no world for denying.
Come lads and lasses, fall to play
Lose no more time in sighing
The very flowers you pluck to-day
To-morrow will be dying;
And all the flowers are crying,
And all the leaves have tongues to say,Gather ye roses while ye may.
The Moon by Robert Louis Stevenson
The moon has a face like the clock in the hall;
She shines on thieves on the garden wall,
On streets and fields and harbour quays,
And birdies asleep in the forks of the trees.
The squalling cat and the squeaking mouse,
The howling dog by the door of the house,
The bat that lies in bed at noon,
All love to be out by the light of the moon.
But all of the things that belong to the day
Cuddle to sleep to be out of her way;
And flowers and children close their eyes
Till up in the morning the sun shall arise.
Over the Land is April by Robert Louis Stevenson
Over the land is April,
Over my heart a rose;
Over the high, brown mountain
The sound of singing goes.
Say, love, do you hear me,
Hear my sonnets ring?
Over the high, brown mountain,
Love, do you hear me sing?
By highway, love, and byway
The snows succeed the rose.
Over the high, brown mountain
The wind of winter blows.
Say, love, do you hear me,
Hear my sonnets ring?
Over the high, brown mountain
I sound the song of spring,
I throw the flowers of spring.
Do you hear the song of spring?
Hear you the songs of spring?
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The Swing by Robert Louis Stevenson
How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
Windy Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson
Whenever the moon and stars are set,
Whenever the wind is high,
All night long in the dark and wet,
A man goes riding by.
Late in the night when the fires are out,
Why does he gallop and gallop about?
Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
River and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside--
Whenever the trees are crying aloud,
And ships are tossed at sea,
By, on the highway, low and loud,
By at the gallop goes he.
By at the gallop he goes, and then
By he comes back at the gallop again.
Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown-Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!
Lines Composed In A Wood On A Windy Day
by Anne Bronte, 1848
My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring
And carried aloft on the wings of the breeze;
For above and around me the wild wind is roaring,
Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas.
The long withered grass in the sunshine is glancing,
The bare trees are tossing their branches on high;
The dead leaves beneath them are merrily dancing,
The white clouds are scudding across the blue sky
I wish I could see how the ocean is lashing
The foam of its billows to whirlwinds of spray;
I wish I could see how its proud waves are dashing,
And hear the wild roar of their thunder to-day!
Who can see the wind?
by Christina Rosetti, 1893
Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
Breath
by J. Daniel Beaudry
Tree, gather up my thoughts
like the clouds in your branches.
Draw up my soul
like the waters in your root.
In the arteries of your trunk
bring me together.
Through your leaves
breathe out the sky.
Source: http://www.spiritoftrees.org/poetry/tree_poems.html
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For The Future
by Wendell Berry, 1934Planting trees early in spring,
we make a place for birds to sing
in time to come. How do we know?
They are singing here now.
There is no other guarantee
that singing will ever be.
The Peace of Wild Things, 1985 by Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Think Like a Tree
by Karen I. Shragg
Soak up the sun
Affirm life's magic
Be graceful in the wind
Stand tall after a storm
Feel refreshed after it rains
Grow strong without notice
Be prepared for each season
Provide shelter to strangers
Hang tough through a cold spell
Emerge renewed at the first signs of spring
Stay deeply rooted while reaching for the sky
Be still long enough to
hear your own leaves rustling.
Tree Stories: a Collection of Extraordinary Encounters, ed. by Warren Jacobs and Karen I. Shragg. Sunshine Press
Publications. Hygeine, CO (2002). www.sunshinepress.com
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SONNET XVIII by William Shakespeare, c. 1599
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
SONNET XIX by William Shakespeare, c. 1599
Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,
And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood;
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets,
And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets;
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:
O, carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;
Him in thy course untainted do allow
For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.
Yet, do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young.
SONNET XXIX by William Shakespeare, c. 1599
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone betweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
William Wordsworth, 1770-1850
Lines Written in Early Spring, 1798
I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
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Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.
Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.S
The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:-But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.
The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.
If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?
Daffodils, 1804
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 stretchd 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.
When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer by Walt Whitman, 1892
WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
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Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886
A bird came down the walk:
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He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.
And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.
He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad,-They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head
Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home
Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, plashless, as they swim.
She Walks In Beauty by Lord Byron, 1875
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
The Tyger, by William Blake, 1794
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
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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 water'd 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?
Vocabulary
immortal – noun: a being that never dies; adjective - not subject to death
symmetry - beauty as a result of balance or harmonious arrangement; correspondence in size, shape, and relative
position of parts on opposite sides of a central dividing line .
aspire – to have a great desire; to aim at a goal
sinews – muscular power
E5 Literature: a. Respond to poetry using interpretive, critical and evaluative processes.
QUESTIONS
1. Where does the tyger live?
2. Who created the tyger?
3. Where did the tyger’s eyes come from?
4. Describe the tyger’s eyes
5. How does the poet describe the tyger’s maker in lines 7, 8, and 12?
6. Where was the tyger’s brain made?
7. How is the first and last verses different?
8. What kind of sentence and punctuation mark does the poet repeatedly use?
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a
green thing that stands in the way. Some see Nature all ridicule and
deformity, and some scarce see Nature at all. But to the eyes of the
man of imagination, Nature is Imagination itself.
- William Blake, 1799, The Letters
Fragments from Willam Blake’s "Auguries of Innocence," circa 1803
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
by Shel Silverstein, 1996
The Bear, The Fire, and The Snow,
"I live in fear of the snow," said the bear.
"Whenever it's here, be sure I'll be there.
Oh, the pain and the cold,
When one's bearish and old.
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I live in fear of the snow."
"I live in fear of the fire," said the snow.
"Whenever it comes then it's time I must go.
With its yellow lick flames
Leaping higher and higher,
I live in fear of the fire."
"It can drown all my flames anytime it desires,
And the thought of the wet
Makes me sputter and shiver.
I live in fear of the river."
"I live in fear of the bear," said the river.
"It can lap me right up, don't you know?
"
While a mile away
You can hear the bear say,
"I live in fear of the snow."
"I live in fear of the river," said the fire.
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822
I met a traveller from an antique land
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Who said -- "two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer
The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
Sea Fever by John Masefield, 1902
I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born
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And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.
I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.
The Negro Speaks of Rivers, 1921 (written summer after high school graduation)
by Langston Hughes, 1902-1967
I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and
Older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when
Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and
I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers;
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Robert Frost, 1874-1963
Fire and Ice, 1923
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
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I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Nothing Gold Can Stay, Robert Frost, 1923
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening, 1923
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Martin Carter, British Guyana, 1927-1997
Bitter Wood, 1988
Here be dragons, and bitter
cups made of wood; and the hooves
of horses where they should not
sound. Yet on the roofs of houses
walk the carpenters, as once did
cartographers on the spoil
of splendid maps. Here is where
I am, in a great geometry, between
a raft of ants and the green sight
of the freedom of a tree, made
of that same bitter wood
Fossils
by Arthur J. Stewart
I come down across stones lightly,
In a Small City at Dusk
In a small city at dusk
it is difficult to distinguish
bird from bat. Both fly fast:
one away from the dark
and one toward the dark.
The bird to a nest in the tree
The bat to a feast in its branches.
Stranger to each other they seek
planted by beak or claw or hand
the same tree that grows out of the great soil.
And I know, even before I came to live here,
before the city had so many houses
dusk did the same to bird and bat and does
the same to man.
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a part of them. Sandstone, shale,
something else that's old-bone white perhaps the granite knows.
(The translation of time from stone
to stone
takes times. Things
move slowly.)
Trilobites mix quietly with small fishes.
Coal knows more by far than I.
Anthracite blinks in the sun,
smiling sleepily, thinking deeply of seed-ferns.
There was a time when things
fought to the death to decide
whether a clutch of eggs
would bear scales or feathers.
But now, Archaeopteryx is just
a clumsy arrow bent in sandstone,
with a three or four-chambered heart
that still sighs with your ear held close.
(Source: Firstscience.com. http://www.firstscience.com/home/poems-and-quotes/poems-page-31-30.html)
in Justby e.e. cummings, 1920
IN Justspring when the world is mudluscious the little
lame baloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
SPRING by Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1921
O what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
the queer
old baloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it's
spring
and
the
goat-footed
baloonMan whistles
far
and
wee
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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.
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 flowers.
Wild Swans by Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1921
I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over.
And what did I see I had not seen before?
Only a question less or a question more;
Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying.
Tiresome heart, forever living and dying,
House without air, I leave you and lock your door.
Wild swans, come over the town, come over
The town again, trailing your legs and crying!
RECUERDO by Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1922
WE were very tired, we were very merry -We had gone back and forth all night upon the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable -But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on the hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
We were very tired, we were very merry -We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and the pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, 1986
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
You do not have to be good.
love what it loves.
You do not have to walk on your knees
15
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you
mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Solitude by Nancy Wood, 1993
Do not be afraid to embrace the arms of loneliness
Do not be concerned with the thorns of solitude.
Why worry that you will miss something?
Learn to be at home with yourself
without a hand to hold.
Learn to endure isolation
with only the stars for friends.
Happiness
Comes from understanding
unity.
Love
Arrives on the footprints
of your fears.
Beauty
arises from the ashes of
dispair.
Solitude brings the clarity of still
waters.
Wisdom
completes the circle of
your dreams.
What Kind of Times Are These by Adrienne Rich, --from Dark Fields of the Republic, 1995
There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted who disappeared into those shadows.
I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled
this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread, its own ways of making people disappear.
I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light -
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise: I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.
And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it's necessary
to talk about trees.
The title "What Kind of Times are These?" was drawn from a Berthold Brecht poem, "To posterity," in which he
wrote: "Ah, what an age it is /
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
/For it is a kind of silence about
injustice!"
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834
Kubla Khan
16
OR, A VISION IN A DREAM. A FRAGMENT.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil
seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
The Garden
by Andrew Marvell, c. 1660
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war !
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
17
How vainly men themselves amaze
To win the palm, the oak, or bays;
And their uncessant labors see
Crowned from some single herb or tree,
Whose short and narrow-vergèd shade
Does prudently their toils upbraid ;
While all the flowers and trees do close
To weave the garlands of repose.
Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence, thy sister dear!
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men :
Your sacred plants, if here below,
Only among the plants will grow ;
Society is all but rude,
To this delicious solitude.
No white nor red was ever seen
So amorous as this lovely green;
Fond lovers, cruel as their flame,
Cut in these trees their mistress' name.
Little, alas, they know or heed,
How far these beauties hers exceed!
Fair trees! wheresoe'er your barks I wound
No name shall but your own be found.
When we have run our passion's heat,
Love hither makes his best retreat:
The gods who mortal beauty chase,
Still in a tree did end their race.
Apollo hunted Daphne so,
Only that she might laurel grow,
And Pan did after Syrinx speed,
Not as a nymph, but for a reed.
What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
City Elegies, by Robert Pinsky
I. The Day Dreamers
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons as I pass,
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness:
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.
Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide :
There like a bird it sits and sings,
Then whets and combs its silver wings;
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.
Such was that happy garden-state,
While man there walked without a mate:
After a place so pure and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet!
But 'twas beyond a mortal's share
To wander solitary there:
Two paradises 'twere in one
To live in Paradise alone.
How well the skillful gard'ner drew
Of flowers and herbs this dial new;
Where from above the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run;
And, as it works, th' industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers!
18
All day all over the city every person
Wanders a different city, sealed intact
And haunted as the abandoned subway stations
Under the city. Where is my alley doorway?
Stone gable, brick escarpment, cliffs of crystal.
Where is my terraced street above the harbor,
Café and hidden workshop, house of love?
Webbed vault, tiled blackness. Where is my park, the path
Through conifers, my iron bench, a shiver
Of ivy and margin birch above the traffic?
A voice. There is a mountain and a wood
Between us—one wrote, lovesick—Where the late
Hunter and the bird have seen us. Aimless at dusk,
Heart muttering like any derelict,
Or working all morning, violent with will,
Where is my garland of lights? My silver rail?
High School Senior (from The Wellspring), by Sharon Olds, 1996
For seventeen years, her breath in the house
at night, puff, puff, like summer
cumulus above her bed,
and her scalp smelling of apricots
--this being who had formed within me,
squatted like a bright tree-frog in the dark,
like an eohippus she had come out of history
slowly, through me, into the daylight,
I had the daily sight of her,
like food or air she was there, like a mother.
I say "college," but I feel as if I cannot tell
the difference between her leaving for college
and our parting forever--I try to see
this house without her, without her pure
depth of feeling, without her creek-brown
hair, her daedal hands with their tapered
fingers, her pupils dark as the mourning cloak's
wing, but I can't. Seventeen years
ago, in this room, she moved inside me,
I looked at the river, I could not imagine
my life with her. I gazed across the street,
and saw, in the icy winter sun,
a column of steam rush up away from the earth.
.
Litany by Billy Collins, 2002
There are creatures whose children float away
at birth, and those who throat-feed their young
for weeks and never see them again. My daughter
is free and she is in me--no, my love
of her is in me, moving in my heart,
changing chambers, like something poured
from hand to hand, to be weighed and then
reweighed
19
You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.
However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way you are the pine-scented air.
It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.
And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.
It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.
I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley,
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.
I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I am not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and—somehow—the wine.
A Gary Poem (Chocolate City) by Curtis L. Crisler from Tough Boy Sonatas, 2007
Oh city,
20
City of misfortune,
City of layoff industry,
City with adult children on abandoned playgrounds,
Pregnant city with no father,
I sleep in your belly,
I find comfort in your uncomfortable posture,
Roach-like, I am everywhere,
Especially under belly
Of city dwellers desperate to dream.
You raised me with industrial hands
A double-shifter for the moolah,
And you shaped me with a criminal eager
To steal that which is substance.
I am one of your tenement babies,
An adolescent dressed in dissolution,
A stranger infused in steel city – home.
Is a ghost town more than the people in it?
You turn your head, Broadway doesn’t illuminate
Its fine lights or blink its brilliance anymore.
Green air, factory air, a musty funk
Mix with the spit from the lot behind the mill;
Thie morning bus exhaust tailgates up 5th Avenue,
Evaporates toward Merrilville and Crown Point.
Your song’s rotating whitewalls over railroad tracks.
I gnash teeth whenthe South Shore flashes by,
Orange and chrome, with groggy commuters
Buzzing from Miller to Chicago.
Oh city,
You are receptor for change,
The sun’s golden smile is held off premises,
Cracked sidewalks embroidered with weedsWild children, green, crabgrass citizens,
Poking up from reconstruction, rebuilding
The suture-splitting revelation
That the sweet, snug grip about Gary’s neck
Is the right hand of corporation,
Lucrative with strangleholds
On tired folks relieved of all breath.
Selected Haiku by Issa
Translated by Robert Haas
21
Don’t worry, spiders,
I keep house
casually.
New Year’s Day—
everything is in blossom!
I feel about average.
The snow is melting
and the village is flooded
with children.
Goes out,
comes back—
the love life of a cat.
Mosquito at my ear—
does he think
I’m deaf?
Under the evening moon
the snail
is stripped to the waist.
Even with insects—
some can sing,
some can’t.
5 haiku by Issa from The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa, edited and with an introduction
by Robert Hass.
Alligator Poem by Mary Oliver
I knelt down
at the edge of the water,
and if the white birds standing
in the tops of the trees whistled any warning
22
I didn't understand,
I drank up to the very moment it came
crashing toward me,
its tail flailing
like a bundle of swords,
slashing the grass,
and the inside of its cradle-shaped mouth
gaping,
and rimmed with teeth-and that's how I almost died
of foolishness
in beautiful Florida
But I didn't.
I leaped aside, and fell,
and it streamed past me, crushing everything in its
path
as it swept down to the water
and threw itself in,
and, in the end,
this isn't a poem about foolishness
but about how I rose from the ground
and saw the world as if for the second time,
the way it really is.
The water, that circle of shattered glass,
healed itself with a slow whisper
and lay back
with the back-lit light of polished steel,
and the birds, in the endless waterfalls of the trees,
shook open the snowy pleats of their wings, and
drifted away,
while, for a keepsake, and to steady myself,
I reached out,
I picked the wild flowers from the grass around me-blue stars
and blood-red trumpets
on long green stems-for hours in my trembling hands they glittered
like fire.
Quote
"Far off in the red mangroves an alligator has heaved himself onto a hummock of grass and lies there, studying
his poems."
— Mary Oliver
The Melon by CHARLES SIMIC
There was a melon fresh from the garden
So ripe the knife slurped
As it cut it into six slices.
The children were going back to school.
Their mother, passing out paper plates,
Would not live to see the leaves fall.
I remember a hornet, too, that flew in
Through the open window
Mad to taste the sweet fruit
While we ducked and screamed,
Covered our heads and faces,
And sat laughing after it was gone.