Best Poems on Nature By Renowned Poets

Nature has always been a great learning for human beings. Nature tells us to be kind, helpful, and have a feeling of gratitude towards others. So, let’s read these Best Poems on Nature By Renowned Poets…

 

“PIED BEAUTY”

–By Gerard Manley Hopkins

GLORY be to God for dappled things-

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow!

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-fire coal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced- fold, fallow, and plough;

And all trades, their gear and tackle, and trim.

 

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow, sweet, sour, adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change;

Praise him.

• Explanation–

Here in this poem, the poet is throwing light on the changeable creation of the world by an unchangeable creator, God. He said the creator is dynamic rather than static and continuously generates the world. The poet admires the liveliness of ‘pied’ things through various natural creations of God. At the same time, it pays its supreme tribute to God and urges the reader to respond to God’s extraordinary deeds by thanking him.

 

“TRUE GROWTH”

-By Ben Jonson

It is not growing like a tree

In bulk, doth make man better be

Or standing long as an oak, three hundred years

To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere.

 

A lily of a day

Is fairer far in May,

Although it fall and die that night

It was the plant and flower of Light.

 

In small proportions we just beauty see

And in short measures life may perfect be.

• Explanation- 

This poem reflects the meaning of true life with the help of an oak and a beautiful flower of the lily. He says that a short and meaningful life is far better than a long and meaningless life which is not helpful for others. He narrated the life story of Lily and said that in spite of having a very short life span, the lily spreads happiness to others whereas Oak lives for hundreds of years, dry bald and sere at last. Thus a life full of empathy, gratitude, love, care, and, honesty is true life.

 

“THE BUTTERFLY”

-By Arun Kolatkar

There is no story behind it.

It is split like a second

It hinges around itself.

 

It has no future.

It is pinned down to no past.

It’s a pun on the present.

 

It’s a little yellow butterfly.

It has taken these wretched hills

under its wings.

 

Just a pinch of yellow,

It opens before it o…

Where is it

• Explanation-

The Butterfly which was written by Arun Kolatkar, an Indian poet wrote about the place- Jejuri, a temple town. Hills in Jejuri show the barrenness of the place and the butterfly with her yellow wings, spreading happiness at that place. The poet says that there is no story behind the butterfly. The butterfly is in two parts, a split that hings around itself. This poem reflects the significance of a little creature with the help of a beautiful little butterfly who is capable of crossing the high peaks of mountains with her fragile wings. 

“ODE TO THE WEST WIND”

–By Percy Bysshe Shelley

I.

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill 

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and preserve; hear, oh hear!

 

II.

Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky’s commotion,

Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angles of rain and lightning: they are spread

On the blue surface of thine aery surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge

Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,

Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear!

 

III.

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lull’d by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,

Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou 

For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below 

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear

The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,

And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear!

 

IV.

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less fire

Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even 

I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed

Scarce seem’d a vision; I would ne’er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has clain’d and bow’d

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

 

V.

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O wind, 

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

• Explanation–

The poet addresses the west wind as the destroyer and preserver and says that it is the breath of autumn. The west wind acts as a magician in whose presence the dry and dead leaves fly like the evil spirits. It drives the seeds into the earth where they lie dead till the spring season renovates them with new life.  Its sister spring will fill the hills and plain with flowers of vivid colors and fragrance.

The rapid movement of the winds is compared to the flow of a river and the clouds.  There is a dramatic rise in the increasing and decreasing velocity of the west wind. Initially, when it started it was in its strong velocity, destroying everything where ever it went. At last, it became a slow wave. 

The poet correlates the life of a human being with the uprising and slow-down movement of the west wind. He says, the burden of life’s misery has crushed a person to the ground but the breath of life may inspire him to believe in a better future.

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