Animals and Nature

We live in an old chaos of the sun, Or old dependency of day and night, Or island solitude, unsponsored, free, Of that wide water, inescapable. Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail Whistle about us their spontaneous cries; Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness; And, in the isolation of the sky, At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make Ambiguous undulations as they sink, Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

Green crammers of the green fruits of the world.

The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on.

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work— I am the grass; I cover all.

Pigeons on the grass alas.

The old dog barks backward without getting up. I can remember when he was a pup.

Tree at my window, window tree, My sash is lowered when night comes on; But let there never be curtain drawn Between you and me.

My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near.

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.

The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued.

Why make so much of fragmentary blue In here and there a bird, or butterfly, Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye, When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?

I’m going out to clean the pasture spring; I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away (And wait to watch the water clear, I may): I shan’t be gone long.—You come too.

Who said “Peacock Pie”? The old king to the sparrow: Who said “Crops are ripe”? Rust to the harrow.

When people call this beast to mind, They marvel more and more At such a little tail behind, So large a trunk before.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream His mind moves upon silence.

Down the mountain walls From where Pan’s cavern is Intolerable music falls. Foul goat-head, brutal arm appear, Belly, shoulder, bum, Flash fishlike; nymphs and satyrs Copulate in the foam.

John Synge, I and Augusta Gregory, thought All that we did, all that we said or sang Must come from contact with the soil, from that Contact everything Antaeus-like grew strong.

That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees —Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unaging intellect.

If there’s no hatred in a mind Assault and battery of the wind Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.

Unwearied still, lover by lover, They paddle in the cold Companionable streams or climb the air; Their hearts have not grown old.

Upon the brimming water among the stones Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves, The brilliant moon and all the milky sky, And all that famous harmony of leaves, Had blotted out man’s image and his cry.

Of all the trees that grow so fair, Old England to adorn, Greater are none beneath the Sun, Than oak, and ash, and thorn.