ExpEriEncing naturE:A collection of poems and quotes that focus on celebrating the natural world

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. -Walt Whitman

tablE of contEnt

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;Lengthen night and shorten day;

Every leaf speaks bliss to meFluttering from the autumn tree.

I shall smile when wreaths of snowBlossom where the rose should grow;

I shall sing when night’s decayUshers in a drearier day.

Fall, leaves, fallby: Emily Bronte

Birchesby: Robert Frost

When I see birches bend to left and rightAcross the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay.

Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen themLoaded with ice a sunny winter morningAfter a rain. They click upon themselves

As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloredAs the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.

Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shellsShattering and avalanching on the snow-crust--

Such heaps of broken glass to sweep awayYou’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed

So low for long, they never right themselves:You may see their trunks arching in the woods

Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the groundLike girls on hands and knees that throw their hair

Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.But I was going to say when Truth broke in

With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm(Now am I free to be poetical?)

I should prefer to have some boy bend themAs he went out and in to fetch the cows--

Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,Whose only play was what he found himself,

Summer or winter, and could play alone.

One by one he subdued his father’s treesBy riding them down over and over againUntil he took the stiffness out of them,

And not one but hung limp, not one was leftFor him to conquer. He learned all there wasTo learn about not launching out too soon

And so not carrying the tree awayClear to the ground. He always kept his poise

To the top branches, climbing carefullyWith the same pains you use to fill a cupUp to the brim, and even above the brim.

Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.And so I dream of going back to be.

It’s when I’m weary of considerations,And life is too much like a pathless wood

Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebsBroken across it, and one eye is weeping

From a twig’s having lashed across it open.I’d like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me awayNot to return. Earth’s the right place for love:

I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunkToward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.That would be good both going and coming back.One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars. ~Walt Whitman

PetalsBy: Amy LowellLife is a stream

On which we strewPetal 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 never shall know. And the stream as it flowsSweeps them away,

Each one is goneEver beyond into infinite ways.

We alone stayWhile years hurry on,

The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment. ~Jane Austen

Shall I compare thee to a summers day? Sonnet 18

William Shakespeare

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 dimmed;And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed.But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

The Shapes of Leaves By: Arthur Sze

Ginkgo, cottonwood, pin oak, sweet gum, tulip tree: our emotions resemble leaves and alive

to their shapes we are nourished.

Have you felt the expanse and contours of grief along the edges of a big Norway maple?

Have you winced at the orange flare

searing the curves of a curling dogwood? I have seen from the air logged islands,

each with a network of branching gravel roads,

and felt a moment of pure anger, aspen gold. I have seen sandhill cranes moving in an open field,

a single white whooping crane in the flock.

And I have traveled along the contours of leaves that have no name. Here

where the air is wet and the light is cool,

I feel what others are thinking and do not speak, I know pleasure in the veins of a sugar maple,

I am living at the edge of a new leaf.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. ~William Shakespeare

NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY By: Robert Frost

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.

LINES COMPOSED IN A WOOD ON A WINDY DAYby: Anne Bronte

Y soul is awakened, my spirit is soaringAnd 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 lashingThe 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!

Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. ~Rachel Carson

LostBy: David Wagoner

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here, And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,

Must ask permission to know it and be known. The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,

I have made this place around you, If you leave it you may come back again, saying

Here. No two trees are the same to Raven.

No two branches are the same to Wren. If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,

You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows Where you are. You must let it find you.

God the ArtistBy: Angela Morgan

God, when you thought of a pine tree,How did you think of a star?

How did you dream of the Milky WayTo guide us from afar.

How did you think of a clean brown poolWhere flecks of shadows are?

God, when you thought of a cobweb,How did you think of dew?

How did you know a spider’s houseHad shingles bright and new?

How did you know the human folkWould love them like they do?

God, when you patterned a bird song,Flung on a silver string,

How did you know the ecstasyThat crystal call would bring?

How did you think of a bubbling throatAnd a darling speckled wing?

God, when you chiseled a raindrop,How did you think of a stem,

Bearing a lovely satin leafTo hold the tiny gem?

How did you know a million dropsWould deck the morning’s hem?

Why did you mate the moonlit nightWith the honeysuckle vines?

How did you know Madeira bloomDistilled ecstatic wines?

How did you weave the velvet diskWhere tangled perfumes are?

God, when you thought of a pine tree,How did you think of a star?

The poetry of the earth is never dead. ~John Keats