Animals and Nature

How doth the little crocodile Improve his shining tail, And pour the waters of the Nile On every golden scale! 1 How cheerfully he seems to grin, How neatly spreads his claws, And welcomes little fishes in With gently smiling jaws!

Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I: But when the trees bow down their heads, The wind is passing by.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few.

Bees are Black, with Gilt Surcingles— Buccaneers of Buzz.

The Pedigree of Honey Does not concern the Bee— A Clover, any time, to him, Is Aristocracy.

Experiment to me Is every one I meet If it contain a Kernel? The Figure of a Nut Presents upon a Tree Equally plausibly, But Meat within, is requisite To Squirrels, and to Me.

A narrow Fellow in the Grass Occasionally rides—

And neigh like Boanerges— Then punctual as a Star Stop—docile and omnipotent At its own stable door—

I like to see it lap the Miles— And lick the Valleys up—

This is my letter to the World That never wrote to Me— The simple News that Nature told— With tender Majesty.

These are the days when Birds come back— A very few—a Bird or two— To take a backward look. These are the days when skies resume The old—old sophistries of June— A blue and gold mistake.

Full lasting is the song, though he, The singer, passes.

The song seraphically free Of taint of personality.

For singing till his heaven fills, ’Tis love of earth that he instills, And ever winging up and up, Our valley is his golden cup, And he the wine which over flows To lift us with him as he goes.

What are we first? First, animals; and next Intelligences at a leap; on whom Pale lies the distant shadow of the tomb.

Cruel, but composed and bland, Dumb, inscrutable and grand, So Tiberius might have sat, Had Tiberius been a cat.

The day in its hotness, The strife with the palm; The night in her silence, The stars in their calm.

Nature, with equal mind, Sees all her sons at play; Sees man control the wind, The wind sweep man away.

Where great whales come sailing by, Sail and sail, with unshut eye, Round the world forever and aye.

Perfumes, colors and sounds echo one another

The poet is like the prince of the clouds Who haunts the tempest and laughs at the archer; Exiled on the ground in the midst of jeers, His giant wings prevent him from walking. 1

A noiseless patient spider, I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated, Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding, It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament out of itself, Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

The horizon’s edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud, These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day.

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking, Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle, Out of the Ninth-month midnight.