Book of Comfort 4

Nature is a constant source of joy and inspiration - here are two nature poems, one new to me found in a random book of poems; the other an old, old favourite (I studied the Romantic poets for A-level way back when...). 

The Waking

I strode across

An open field;

The sun was out,

Heat was happy.

This way! This way!

The wren's throat shimmered,

Either to other,

The blossoms sang.

The stones sang,

The little ones did,

And flowers jumped

Like small goats.

A ragged fringe

Of daisies waved;

I wasn't alone

In the grove of apples.

Far in the wood

A nestling sighed;

The dew loosened

Its morning smells.

I came where the river

Ran over stones;

My ears knew

An early joy.

And all the waters

Of all the streams

Sang in my veins

That summer day.

~Theodore Roethke~

From Lines Composed a few Miles Above Tintern Abbey

For I have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes

The still, sad music of humanity,

Not harsh, nor grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue. And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in mind of man

A motion and a spirit that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things.

~William Wordsworth~

I just love the 5th stanza of the The Waking: 'Far in the wood/ A nestling sighed/ The dew loosened/ Its morning smells' - I know that early dew smell, there is no other like it :) 

And dear William's 'a sense sublime/ Of something far more deeply interfused', I've experienced every day of my life - long before I ever knew the words to describe it. Indeed it is a counter-refrain to the 'still, sad music of humanity'...