Animals and Nature

For Art may err, but Nature cannot miss.

I am as free as Nature first made man, Ere the base laws of servitude began, When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

By viewing Nature, Nature’s handmaid Art, Makes mighty things from small beginnings grow.

Ye fields of Cambridge, our dear Cambridge, say, Have ye not seen us walking every day? Was there a tree about which did not know The love betwixt us two?

The thirsty earth soaks up the rain, And drinks, and gapes for drink again. The plants suck in the earth, and are With constant drinking fresh and fair.

Fly ’bout the ears of the old cur.

Elephants endorsed with towers.

Her rash hand in evil hour Forth reaching to the fruit, she pluck’d, she eat: Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat, Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe That all was lost.

The serpent subtlest beast of all the field.

Accuse not Nature, she hath done her part; Do thou but thine.

Liquid lapse of murmuring streams.

There Leviathan Hugest of living creatures, on the deep Stretch’d like a promontory sleeps or swims, And seems a moving land, and at his gills Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out a sea.

Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve.

With thee conversing I forget all time, All seasons, and their change; all please alike. Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, With charm of earliest birds.

The middle tree and highest there that grew, Sat like a cormorant.

O nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray Warbl’st at eve, when all the woods are still.

As killing as the canker to the rose.

Under the opening eyelids of the morn, We drove afield; and both together heard What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn, Batt’ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night.

Sabrina fair, Listen where thou art sitting Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, In twisted braids of lilies knitting The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair; Listen for dear honor’s sake, Goddess of the silver lake, Listen and save.

Beauty is Nature’s brag, and must be shown In courts, at feasts, and high solemnities, Where most may wonder at the workmanship; It is for homely features to keep home— They had their name thence; coarse complexions And cheeks of sorry grain will serve to ply The sampler, and to tease the huswife’s wool. What need a vermeil-tinctur’d lip for that, Love-darting eyes, or tresses like the morn?

Beauty is Nature’s coin, must not be hoarded, But must be current, and the good thereof Consists in mutual and partaken bliss.

Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph, that liv’st unseen Within thy airy shell By slow Meander’s margent green, And in the violet-embroider’d vale.

The star that bids the shepherd fold.

Sweet bird, that shunn’st the noise of folly, Most musical, most melancholy!