Nature poetry

“ Nature is filled with poetry. The great poet is God, and he has filled the universe with rhythm, harmony, beauty. Human poems are but faulty shells gathered on the shore of the divine ocean of poetry. The stars are the poetry of the skies. The planets and stellar systems that circle in their glorious orbits preserve a sublime harmony of movement. The light that reaches us from distant worlds comes to us in rhythmical wavelets. Every human life is a poem,—often an amusing comedy, but still oftener a moving tragedy. ”

“ Since words, through their meanings and associated images, can express things as well as man's reactions to them, poetry can also reflect the natural environment of life, its habitat and seat. And yet, because the poet has to translate things into ideas, nature never appears in poetry as it is in itself, but as it is implicated in mind. For the poet, sea and sky, the woods and plains and rivers, birds and flowers, are the symbols of human destiny or the loci of human action. ”

“ Such studies lift the mind into the truly sublime of nature. The poet’s dream is the dim reflection of a distant star: the philosopher’s revelation is a strong telescopic examination of its features. One is the mere echo of the remote whisper of nature’s voice in the dim twilight ”

“ Nature, this personal sympathy with the poet’s kin in wild Nature, and this taking on as a body the matter and form of a tree or flower or bird or other creature of Nature, and becoming vocal for them, and thus uttering their thoughts, and feelings, and emotions, is new in Nature poetry, and original with Bliss Carman. ”

“ The love of Nature, though not then for the first time awakened,—for there are clear indications of the powerful influence of this sentiment, though in subordination to human interests, in the earlier epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry,—came then prominently forward as an element of refined pleasure in life, and as an inspiring influence both to poets and painters. ”

“ It follows, as a corollary from this, that external Nature also imitates Art. The only effects that she can show us are effects that we have already seen through poetry, or in paintings. This is the secret of Nature’s charm, as well as the explanation of Nature’s weakness. ”

“ I see more clearly than ever before that sweetened prose put up in verse form does not make poetry any more than sweetened water put in the comb in the hive makes honey. The quality of the man makes all the difference in the world. A great nature can describe birds and flowers and clouds and sunsets and spring and autumn greatly. ”

“ Poetry, we are often told, has two great objects with which it deals, two substances out of which alone it weaves its many-colored fabric—Man and Nature. Yet such a statement seems hardly adequate. For is there not in all high Poetry, whether it deals with Nature or with Man, continual reference, now latent, now expressed, to something which is beyond and above both? ”

“ In all these dwells the spirit of poetry, and it is the highest office of the imagination, to extract from these the divine element. Is she the less able to do this, when from nature’s works she looks up with filial awe to nature’s God? By our admiration of the character and attributes of the Great Creator, are we led to regard the works of his hand, with emotions less enthusiastic and poetical? ”

“ Letting observation sleep, what can you know of nature? and you are a judge of landscape indeed. So it is that the world is taught to think of nature, as seen through other men's eyes, without any reference to its own original powers of perception, and much natural beauty is lost. ”

“ Of course, in so far as this expression is aesthetic, it is an expression not of nature alone, but of our responses as well; but nature is the starting point, not emotion as in lyric poetry, nor the effect upon destiny as in the epic. ”

“ And what is this but to claim for the mass of men, in varying but definite degrees, a capacity for the experiences of the nature-mystic? Poetry and Nature Mysticism are linked together in an imperishable life so long as man is man and the world is the world. ”

“ Although in the more imaginative of modern poets, modes of conceiving Nature, and expressions every here and there crop out, which in an earlier age would certainly have flowered into mythology, it is nevertheless true that, ever since the literary age set in, poets in general have viewed Nature with a more familiar eye, and described it in language which ordinary speech would not disown. I shall now endeavor to classify the several ways in which Nature is dealt with by the poets, the several aspects of it which enter most prominently into Poetry. ”

“ For nature arouses in them deep emotions, and their pictures, like the poet’s verses, not only describe the beauty of nature, but express the sentiment, or feeling, of their own souls.
On the other hand you must not expect to find this suggestion of poetry in all modern naturalistic landscape. There are still artists whose point of view, like that of the old Dutchmen, is objective. They are content to paint the beauty of nature simply as it shows itself to their eyes. ”

“ Is not this more in keeping with the whole of Nature, more true to human life in all its aspects, than poetry which dwells merely on the bright and cheerful side of things? If Nature has its [273] vernal freshness, and its “high midsummer pomps,” has it not as well autumnal decay, bleakness of winter, and dreary visitations of blighting east wind? What are we to make of these? Are not suffering and death forever going on throughout animated creation? ”

“ This is proved by the well-attested fact, that Poetry ever diminishes in strength of thought, boldness of conception, and power of embodying striking images, in proportion as it becomes polished and cultivated. The uncivilized tenant of our forests is, by nature, a Poet! ”

“ ON SIMPLE AND SENTIMENTAL POETRY.
There are moments in life when nature inspires us with a sort of love and respectful emotion, not because she is pleasing to our senses, or because she satisfies our mind or our taste (it is often the very opposite that happens) , but merely because she is nature. This feeling is often elicited when nature is considered in her plants, in her mineral kingdom, in rural districts; also in the case of human nature, in the case of children, and in the manners of country people and of the primitive races. ”

“ It is the life of nature which is everywhere recognized; not mere growth and cell changes, but sentient, personal life; and the recognition of this personality in nature characterizes all the world's great poetry. ”

“ An examination of the books recommended for [Pg 81] children's study and delight will reveal a large number of the most graceful, inspiriting products of human thought, which are nature poems, nature hymns, odes to skylark, the dandelion, the mountain daisy, communings with the myriad moods and forms of the natural world. Such books as "Nature Pictures by American Poets," "Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics," "Poetry of the Seasons," the "Open Sesame" books, and others, show an infinite variety of poetic inspiration from nature. ”

“ At any time, and under any circumstances of human interest, is it not strange to see how little real hold the objects of the natural world amid which we live can gain on our hearts and minds? We go to Nature for comfort in trouble, and sympathy in joy, only in books. Admiration of those beauties of the inanimate world, which modern poetry so largely and so eloquently describes, is not, even in the best of us, one of the original instincts of our nature. ”

“ In the silent arts, as in nature, the prevailing mood is equable, and must be caught. The picture on your walls that displays nature in her ordinary mien, and not in a vehement and exceptional phase, is the one which does not weary you. But poetry, with its time-extension, has True naturalism.the freedom of dramatic contrasts—of tranquillity and passion according to nature's own allotment. With this brave advantage, naturalism is ignoble which restricts itself to the ordinary, and is indeed grossly untrue to our life, at times so concentrated and electric. ”

“ The truth on which especially I wished to fix attention is the relation which exists between Nature and the sensitive and imaginative soul of man, and the result or creation which arises from the meeting of these two. That is a true and genuine result, which it does not fall within the province of Science to investigate, but which it is one peculiar function of Poetry to seize, and, as far as may be, to interpret. ”

“ However this may be, to do this, to treat Nature in this way, so to interpret it that it shall touch the moral heart of the most thoughtful and apprehensive men—this is one of the two highest functions of inspired Poetry. ”

“ Whatever attitude to human existence you fashion for yourself, know that it is valid only if it be the shadow of an attitude to Nature. A (222) human life, so often likened to a spectacle upon a stage, is more justly a ritual. The ancient values of dignity, beauty, and poetry which sustain it are of Nature’s inspiration; they are born of the mystery and beauty of the world. Do no dishonour to the earth lest you dishonour the spirit of man. Hold your hands out over the earth as over a flame. ”

“ It may be that the aesthetic side of our nature has been neglected and we fail to see nature as a manifestation of wisdom, truth, and beauty and cannot understand her whisperings, then we have but to turn to poetry to find an elevating and ennobling interpretation. ”

“ Poetry is the universal art of the mind which has become free in its own nature, and which is not tied to find its realization in external sensuous matter, but expatiates exclusively in the [Pg 173] inner space and inner time of the ideas and feelings. ”

“ And there are many ways of apprehending nature. There are the sounds and sights of nature which delight the senses, and the involved harmonies and the secret affinities which poetry makes us feel; then, moreover, there is the definite knowledge of natural facts in which the memory and reason are employed. ”

“ On the one hand, he observes with a fresh, cheerful glance those objects of Nature which express their life in positive existence, in growth and in motion, (objects which we are accustomed to call lifeless,) and thereby approaches the field of descriptive poetry ”

“ Nor is this popular poetry merely the rhythmic expression of joy and sorrow; it is in the highest degree imaginative; and taking its inspiration directly from nature it abounds in realistic metaphor and in picturesque and fantastic imagery. It must, of course, be admitted that there is a conventionality of nature as there is a conventionality of art, and that certain forms of utterance are apt to become stereotyped by too constant use ”

“ Don't judge of Roland as you see him now, Pisistratus,—grim, and gray, and formal: imagine a nature soaring high amongst daring thoughts, or exuberant with the nameless poetry of youthful life, with a frame matchless for bounding elasticity, an eye bright with haughty fire, a heart from which noble sentiments sprang like sparks from an anvil. Lady Ellinor had an ardent, inquisitive imagination. ”

“ He who thus penetrated into the most secret parts of nature preferred always the more to the less remote, what, seeming exceptional, was an instance of law more refined, the construction about things of a peculiar atmosphere and mixed lights. ”

“ Poetry is the image of man and nature. ”

“ The inner life is pictured in the language of external Nature, and Nature is painted in the colors of the heart. The poet must dip his brush in that eternal paint-pot from which the forests and fields, the mountains, the sky, and the stars were painted. ”

“ How gray seem the words of poets in the presence is Nature!... The enormous silent poem of color and light— (you who know only the North do not know color, do not know light!) —of sea and sky, of the woods and the peaks, so far surpasses imagination as to paralyze it—mocking the language of admiration, defying all power of expression. That is before you which never can be painted or chanted, because there is no cunning of art or speech able to reflect it. Nature realizes your most hopeless ideals of beauty, even as one gives toys to a child. ”

“ The poet gathers images from every element, earth, sky, and sea, mountain and meadow; but all are used, not for their own sakes, not to dwell on themselves alone, but to bring out by similitude the force of the human passions and actions, which are the substance of the epic. But the poet who could so use Nature, making her a storehouse of images whence he drew at will, must have lived familiarly in the eye of Nature, loving her in all her aspects with a true though unconscious love. ”

“ When another half-century has passed, curious readers of the back numbers of Nature will probably look on our best, "not without a smile;" and, it may be, that long after the theories of the philosophers whose achievements are recorded in these pages, are obsolete, the vision of the poet will remain as a truthful and efficient symbol of the wonder and the mystery of Nature. ”

“ Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? He would be a poet who could impress the winds and streams into his service, to speak for him; who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers drive down stakes in the spring, which the frost has heaved; who derived his words as often as he used them—transplanted them to his page with earth adhering to their roots ”

“ But the Artist knows that the words and lines and poems he sees in the forest are there as spontaneous creations from the mind of Nature as poems arise in his own mind. And he knows that Nature could go on—and must go on—creating these poems, painting these pictures, for ever and ever. ”