Nature’s Collection: A Poetry Anthology

I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days – three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain

By John Keats

I’d like to begin this anthology with one of my favourite quotes from a great writer who I believe has often been forgotten and overshadowed by time. This poem was found within a letter he addressed to his beloved Fanny Brawne, although the two were never able to marry because he died of tuberculosis at 25.

Like John Keats’ words, this anthology will be exploring the themes of nature in regards to romance, death, and all that defines human nature. Oftentimes, we find that it is humanity that most strongly clashes with nature; although these poems shall provide an insight that determines them as in harmony with the natural world.

I want to tell you
about the sunflower I found
on the sidewalk yesterday.
It is wilting and curled and gorgeous
and knows it.

I want to age like that,
never forgetting my own beauty,
never forgetting how to say bloom.

By Anna Voelker

This poem by Anna Voelker discusses what it means for her to age well: “never forgetting” the beauty that she has always had within herself. This is particularly powerful because oftentimes we are so caught up in trying to preserve what makes us special, when we should actually remember that these things will not fade from us unless we let them.

Ah, Teneriffe!
Retreating Mountain!
Purples of Ages — pause for you —
Sunset — reviews her Sapphire Regiment –
Day — drops you her Red Adieu!

Still — Clad in your Mail of ices –
Thigh of Granite — and thew — of Steel –
Heedless — alike — of pomp — or parting

Ah, Teneriffe!
I’m kneeling — still –

By Emily Dickinson

This poem is about Emily recognizing the strength of the mountain and comparing it to a warrior. The inspiration comes from a real mountain in the Canary Islands, and it reminds us of the strength of nature, and how tiny and utterly helpless we are in front of it.

The canola flowers.

The moon in the east.

The sun in the west.

By Yosa Buson

This is a haiku poem about nature, written to express a moment in time that a person may notice about nature. He sees the growth of flowers, the coming night, and the receding day and might think to himself that it is getting late and he ought to go home. Perhaps he does, and perhaps he doesn’t – it’s not important. The moment has been captured.

The wolf howls in the darkness,
She lets the wind carry her cries.
Her silhouette on a hilltop,
The moon reflected in her eyes.
The agony she carries, the pain.
At her feet, the lifeless cub she bore.
In the animal kingdom it’s the circle of life,
Nothing less and nothing more.
The moon casts down its sympathy,
As it blankets around her rabid soul.
Nature defenseless against man,
An innocent life that white man stole.
As her howl travels,
The hunter stops dead still.
For the hunted often holds revenge,
An angry mother, ready to kill.
Her silhouette no longer rests under the moon,
It runs through the old forest trees.
Her legs swift, much faster than the hunter.
His cries carry through the breeze.

By Amber Huether

This is a deep poem revealing to us the secrets of natural life and the love and often sad harmony with which animals exist in relationship with the abiotic. On the surface, this is a poem about a mother animal protecting her child, yet it also brings in the light the impact of humans on the delicate balance of life.

Every time I go outside, I enter a world of beauty.
The bees, the trees, the flowers, everything counts to me as beauty.
Beauty is not just saying how someone or something looks,
But it shows how Mother Nature has really worked to bring her living creatures alive. Beauty is the sun shining on my head.
Beauty is the trees giving me shade when it’s too hot.
Beauty is neither a man nor a woman,
But beauty is the living creatures around the world

By Maletsah Jones

This is a poem that affirms and delicately states how the beauty within this world is found within nature and not through men and women, although it is somewhat paradoxical because the final line states that beauty is the living creatures. Are we, then, not living?

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night

By Robert Frost

This poem focusses on one’s surroundings and nature as a blank slate devoid of something that might relieve the subject’s loneliness. If our speaker is so well acquainted with the night, he must truly be alone in this world and so views nature with an envious eye, perhaps.

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth’s flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

By Joyce Kilmer

Although I hate to break the trend of poems about sadness, I find that this is a beacon of hope that still anchors us to the mystifications of nature; though it be so beautiful, we will never be able to recreate what has been put there by God. Is this a cause for despair? Perhaps it is.

The modest Rose puts forth a thorn
The humble sheep a threat’ning horn
While the Lilly white shall in Love delight
Nor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright

By William Blake

Roses: a symbol of love, passion, and yet oftentimes we neglect that roses have thorns; thorns that prick and sting us and cause blood to flow. Beauty and love shall mask their true intent to us oftentimes, yet the prickings of a flower shall not disturb true love. Right?

Bury me when I die
beneath a wine barrel
in a tavern.
With luck
the cask will leak

And just like everything, nature’s collection shall end in death. Yet the death of nature shall leak into the soil and the air and nourish the years to come. A way to die, you might say, yet I ask you: is that truly a death?

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