Animals and Nature

Meadows trim, with daisies pied, Shallow brooks, and rivers wide; Towers and battlements it sees Bosom’d high in tufted trees, Where perhaps some beauty lies, The cynosure of neighboring eyes.

While the cock with lively din Scatters the rear of darkness thin, And to the stack, or the barn door, Stoutly struts his dames before, Oft list’ning how the hounds and horn Cheerly rouse the slumb’ring morn.

And every shepherd tells his tale Under the hawthorn in the dale.

Ask me no more whither doth haste The nightingale when May is past; For in your sweet dividing throat She winters and keeps warm her note.

Most things move th’ under-jaw, the crocodile not. 4 Most things sleep lying, th’ elephant leans or stands. 5

But keep the wolf far thence, that’s foe to men, For with his nails he’ll dig them up again.

Call for the robin redbreast and the wren, Since o’er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men.

Oh, I could still (Like melting snow upon some craggy hill) Drop, drop, drop, drop, Since nature’s pride is, now, a wither’d daffodil.

Nature’s great masterpiece, an Elephant, The only harmless great thing; the giant Of beasts.

Nature’s lay idiot, I taught thee to love.

Ah cannot we As well as cocks and lions jocund be, After such pleasures?

Where the bee sucks, there suck I In a cowslip’s bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat’s back I do fly After summer merrily: Merrily, merrily shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

The very rats Instinctively have quit it.

When you do dance, I wish you A wave o’ the sea, that you might ever do Nothing but that.

Hark! hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings, And Phoebus ’gins arise, His steeds to water at those springs On chalic’d flowers that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes: With everything that pretty is, My lady sweet, arise.

The beast With many heads butts me away.

Where’s my serpent of old Nile?

O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!

In nature’s infinite book of secrecy A little I can read.

Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog.

A falcon, towering in her pride of place, Was by a mousing owl hawk’d at and kill’d.

Duncan: This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses. Banquo: This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve By his lov’d mansionry that the heaven’s breath Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle: Where they most breed and haunt, I have observ’d The air is delicate.

The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, And these are of them.

A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap, And munch’d, and munch’d, and munch’d: “Give me,” quoth I: “Aroint thee, witch!” the rump-fed ronyon cries.