Conservation

Don't Mess With Mother Nature by Jim Warren

Over the sweet work of verdant greens and violet blues
ruleth Nature - the sovereign queen.
One touch of Her Majesty makes the whole world kin,
The mightiest space in fortune she does bring;
Of riches and beauty in her glorious kingdom her people do sing. 

Why do we now see her countenance pale and glory stripped?
Wherein did the sacred and fragile balance tip?
Where and why did things go wrong?
Why do we no longer hear the fair queen's song? 

Hath not in Nature's mystery more knowledge and science,
Than can be beheld by Men's painful ignorance and vile defiance?
Hath not Nature given them eyes,
Can they not hear Her Majesty's piteous and stoic cries? 

Now Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams of Men suffuse,
Wanton destruction and evil schemes perfuse.
A vicious tear in Nature's fabric Men hath wrought,
Portending ills that were never before about. 

To Men's unkindness and blind avarice,
Nature has shown clemency and great patience.
Long before Men hath come to realize that Nature is sick of her sufferance,
Tired of shedding claret tears and choking on silent laments, 

Her Majesty may hath given up,
Her life sapped and light snuffed out.
Will the queen rise again one day,
Before the final end comes and the world starts to sway? 

Will Men’s repentance cast the spell,
To save the world on which all life dwell?
Now Men can only hope, Men can only pray,
His efforts to save and conserve will one day pay. 

May all is well that ends well,
And that to greed our heritage we do not sell.

author unknown

To Nature

Paul Turner Sargent

To Nature

It may indeed be phantasy, when I
Essay to draw from all created things
Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings ;
And trace in leaves and flowers that round me lie
Lessons of love and earnest piety.
So let it be ; and if the wide world rings
In mock of this belief, it brings
Nor fear, nor grief, nor vain perplexity.
So will I build my altar in the fields,
And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,
And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields
Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee,
Thee only God ! and thou shalt not despise
Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Marshlands

Marshland, Medfield by Dennis Miller Bunker

A thin wet sky, that yellows at the rim,  And meets with sun-lost lip the marsh's brim.  The pools low lying, dank with moss and mould,  Glint through their mildews like large cups of gold.  Among the wild rice in the still lagoon,  In monotone the lizard shrills his tune.  The wild goose, homing, seeks a sheltering,  Where rushes grow, and oozing lichens cling.  Late cranes with heavy wing, and lazy flight,  Sail up the silence with the nearing night.  And like a spirit, swathed in some soft veil,  Steals twilight and its shadows o'er the swale.  Hushed lie the sedges, and the vapours creep,  Thick, grey and humid, while the marshes sleep.  Emily Pauline Johnson

To A Waterfowl

Whither, 'midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way? 

Vainly the fowler's eye 
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, 
Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 
On the chafed ocean side? 

There is a Power whose care 
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,-- 
The desert and illimitable air,-- 
Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fann'd 
At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere: 
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, 
Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end, 
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, 
And scream among thy fellows; reed shall bend 
Soon o'er thy sheltered nest. 

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven 
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart 
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, 
And shall not soon depart. 

He, who, from zone to zone, 
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone, 
Will lead my steps aright.

William Cullen Bryant

Apples of Hesperides

The Garden Of Hesperides by Frederic Lord Leighton

Glinting golden through the trees,  Apples of Hesperides!  Through the moon-pierced warp of night  Shoot pale shafts of yellow light,  Swaying to the kissing breeze  Swings the treasure, golden-gleaming,  Apples of Hesperides!  Far and lofty yet they glimmer,  Apples of Hesperides!  Blinded by their radiant shimmer,  Pushing forward just for these;  Dew-besprinkled, bramble-marred,  Poor duped mortal, travel-scarred,  Always thinking soon to seize  And possess the golden-glistening  Apples of Hesperides!  Orbed, and glittering, and pendent,  Apples of Hesperides!  Not one missing, still transcendent,  Clustering like a swarm of bees.  Yielding to no man's desire,  Glowing with a saffron fire,  Splendid, unassailed, the golden  Apples of Hesperides!  Amy Lowell

To Autumn

Bountiful Nature by Severin Roesen

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.


Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.


Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats

A Child in the Garden

William Adolphe Bouguereau 

When to the garden of untroubled thought

I came of late, and saw the open door,
And wished again to enter, and explore
The sweet, wild ways with stainless bloom inwrought,
And bowers of innocence with beauty fraught,
It seemed some purer voice must speak before
I dared to tread that garden loved of yore,
That Eden lost unknown and found unsought.

Then just within the gate I saw a child, --
A stranger-child, yet to my heart most dear;
He held his hands to me, and softly smiled
With eyes that knew no shade of sin or fear:
"Come in," he said, "and play awhile with me;"
"I am the little child you used to be."

Henry van Dyke

Autumn In the Garden

Autumn Landscape by Vincent van Gogh

When the frosty kiss of Autumn in the dark

Makes its mark
On the flowers, and the misty morning grieves
Over fallen leaves;
Then my olden garden, where the golden soil
Through the toil
Of a hundred years is mellow, rich, and deep,
Whispers in its sleep.

'Mid the crumpled beds of marigold and phlox,
Where the box
Borders with its glossy green the ancient walks,
There's a voice that talks
Of the human hopes that bloomed and withered here
Year by year,--
Dreams of joy, that brightened all the labouring hours,
Fading as the flowers.

Yet the whispered story does not deepen grief;
But relief
For the loneliness of sorrow seems to flow
From the Long-Ago,
When I think of other lives that learned, like mine,
To resign,
And remember that the sadness of the fall
Comes alike to all.

What regrets, what longings for the lost were theirs!
And what prayers
For the silent strength that nerves us to endure
Things we cannot cure!
Pacing up and down the garden where they paced,
I have traced
All their well-worn paths of patience, till I find
Comfort in my mind.

Faint and far away their ancient griefs appear:
Yet how near
Is the tender voice, the careworn, kindly face,
Of the human race!
Let us walk together in the garden, dearest heart,
Not apart!
They who know the sorrows other lives have known
Never walk alone.

Henry van Dyke

Autumn

Thou comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain, 

With banners, by great gales incessant fanned, 

Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand, 

And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain! 

Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne, 

Upon thy bridge of gold; thy royal hand 

Outstretched with benedictions o'er the land, 

Blessing the farms through all thy vast domain! 

Thy shield is the red harvest moon, suspended 

So long beneath the heaven's o'er-hanging eaves; 

Thy steps are by the farmer's prayers attended; 

Like flames upon an altar shine the sheaves; 

And, following thee, in thy ovation splendid, 

Thine almoner, the wind, scatters the golden leaves!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Field and Forest Call

I

There is a field, that leans upon two hills,
Foamed o'er of flowers and twinkling with clear rills;
That in its girdle of wild acres bears
The anodyne of rest that cures all cares;
Wherein soft wind and sun and sound are blent
With fragrance--as in some old instrument
Sweet chords;--calm things, that Nature's magic spell
Distills from Heaven's azure crucible,
And pours on Earth to make the sick mind well.
There lies the path, they say--
Come away! come away!

II

There is a forest, lying 'twixt two streams,
Sung through of birds and haunted of dim dreams;
That in its league-long hand of trunk and leaf
Lifts a green wand that charms away all grief;
Wrought of quaint silence and the stealth of things,
Vague, whispering' touches, gleams and twitterings,
Dews and cool shadows--that the mystic soul
Of Nature permeates with suave control,
And waves o'er Earth to make the sad heart whole.
There lies the road, they say--
Come away! come away!

Madison Cawein

October

I oft have met her slowly wandering
Beside a leafy stream, her locks blown wild,
Her cheeks a hectic flush, more fair than Spring,
As if on her the sumach copse had smiled.
Or I have seen her sitting, tall and brown,--
Her gentle eyes with foolish weeping dim,--
Beneath a twisted oak from whose red leaves
She wound great drowsy wreaths and cast them down;
The west-wind in her hair, that made it swim
Far out behind, deep as the rustling sheaves.

Or in the hill-lands I have often seen
The marvel of her passage; glimpses faint
Of glimmering woods that glanced the hills between,
Like Indian faces, fierce with forest paint.
Or I have met her 'twixt two beechen hills,
Within a dingled valley near a fall,
Held in her nut-brown hand one cardinal flower;
Or wading dimly where the leaf-dammed rills
Went babbling through the wildwood's arrased hall,
Where burned the beech and maples glared their power.

Or I have met her by some ruined mill,
Where trailed the crimson creeper, serpentine,
On fallen leaves that stirred and rustled chill,
And watched her swinging in the wild-grape vine.
While Beauty, sad among the vales and mountains,
More sad than death, or all that death can teach,
Dreamed of decay and stretched appealing arms,
Where splashed the murmur of the forest's fountains;
With all her loveliness did she beseech,
And all the sorrow of her wildwood charms.

Once only in a hollow, girt with trees,
A-dream amid wild asters filled with rain,
I glimpsed her cheeks red-berried by the breeze,
In her dark eyes the night's sidereal stain.
And once upon an orchard's tangled path,
Where all the golden-rod had turned to brown,
Where russets rolled and leaves were sweet of breath,
I have beheld her 'mid her aftermath
Of blossoms standing, in her gypsy gown,
Within her gaze the deeps of life and death.

Madison Cawein