Nature and Elements

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair— Lean on a garden urn— Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.

Be a worm in a wild apple than a son of man.

A stone is a better pillow than many visions.

I’d sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk.

Pacific leans on the land, Feeling his cold strength To the outmost margins.

Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill, Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.

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

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. 1

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. 1

The ant’s a centaur in his dragon world. Pull down thy vanity, it is not man Made courage, or made order, or made grace, Learn of the green world what can be thy place In scaled invention or true artistry, Pull down thy vanity, The green casque has outdone your elegance.

Winter is icumen in, Lhude sing Goddamm, Raineth drop and staineth slop, And how the wind doth ramm! Sing: Goddamm. 1

Winter is icumen in, Lhude sing Goddamm, Raineth drop and staineth slop, And how the wind doth ramm! Sing: Goddamm. 1

The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind. The paired butterflies are already yellow with August Over the grass in the West garden; They hurt me. I grow older.

The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind. The paired butterflies are already yellow with August Over the grass in the West garden; They hurt me. I grow older.

are the desolate, dark weeks when nature in its barrenness equals the stupidity of man. The year plunges into night and the heart plunges lower than night.

Mothlike in mists, scintillant in the minute brilliance of cloudless days, with broad bellying sails they glide to the wind tossing green water from their sharp prows while over them the crew crawls.

Mothlike in mists, scintillant in the minute brilliance of cloudless days, with broad bellying sails they glide to the wind tossing green water from their sharp prows while over them the crew crawls.

In summer the song sings itself above the muffled words—

As the rain falls so does bathe every object of the world—

so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens

From the petal’s edge a line starts that being of steel infinitely fine, infinitely rigid penetrates the Milky Way without contact—

Old age is a flight of small cheeping birds skimming bare trees above a snow glaze.

By the road to the contagious hospital under the surge of the blue mottled clouds driven from the northeast—a cold wind.