James Oppenheim – The New God

Ye morning-glories, ring in the gale your bells,

And with dew water the walk's dust for the burden-bearing ants:

Ye swinging spears of the larkspur, open your wells of gold

And pay your honey-tax to the hummingbird . . .

O now I see by the opening of blossoms,

And of bills of the hungry fledglings,

And the bright travel of sun-drunk insects,

Morning's business is afoot: Earth is busied with a million mouths!

Where goes eaten grass and thrush-snapped dragonfly?

Creation eats itself, to spawn in swarming sun-rays . . .

Bull and cricket go to it: life lives on life . . .

But O, ye flame-daubed irises, and ye hosts of gnats,

Like a well of light moving in morning's light,

What is this garmented animal that comes eating and drinking among you?

What is this upright one, with spade and with shears?

He is the visible and the invisible,

Behind his mouth and his eyes are other mouth and eyes . . .

Thirster after visions

He sees the flowers to their roots and the Earth back through its silent ages:

He parts the sky with his gaze:

He flings a magic on the hills, clothing them with Upanishad music,

Peopling the valley with dreamed images that vanished in Greece

   millenniums back;

And in the actual morning, out of longing, shapes on the hills

To-morrow's golden grandeur . . .

O ye million hungerers and ye sun-rays

Ye are the many mothers of this invisible god,

This Earth's star and sun that rises singing and toiling among you,

This that is I, in joy, in the garden,

Singing to you, ye morning-glories,

Calling to you, ye swinging spears of the larkspur.

Anne Brontë – Home

That sun surveys a lovely scene

From softly smiling skies;

And wildly through unnumbered trees

The wind of winter sighs:

Now loud, it thunders o'er my head,

And now in distance dies.

But give me back my barren hills

Where colder breezes rise:

Where scarce the scattered, stunted trees

Can yield an answering swell,

But where a wilderness of heath

Returns the sound as well.

For yonder garden, fair and wide,

With groves of evergreen,

Long winding walks, and borders trim,

And velvet lawns between;

Restore to me that little spot,

With gray walls compassed round,

Where knotted grass neglected lies,

And weeds usurp the ground.

Though all around this mansion high

Invites the foor to roam,

And though the halls are fair within--

Oh, give me back my home!

Carl Sandburg – Summer Stars

Bend low again, night of summer stars.

So near you are, sky of summer stars, 

So near, a long-arm man can pick off stars, 

Pick off what he wants in the sky bowl, 

So near you are, summer stars, 

So near, strumming, strumming, 

                So lazy and hum-strumming.

Robert Frost – Birches

When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy's been swinging them.

But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.

Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them

Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning

After a rain. They click upon themselves

As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured

As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.

Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells

Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust

Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away

You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,

And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed

So low for long, they never right themselves:

You may see their trunks arching in the woods

Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,

Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair

Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.

But I was going to say when Truth broke in

With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,

I should prefer to have some boy bend them

As he went out and in to fetch the cows-

Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,

Whose only play was what he found himself,

Summer or winter, and could play alone.

One by one he subdued his father's trees

By riding them down over and over again

Until he took the stiffness out of them,

And not one but hung limp, not one was left

For him to conquer. He learned all there was

To learn about not launching out too soon

And so not carrying the tree away

Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise

To the top branches, climbing carefully

With the same pains you use to fill a cup

Up to the brim, and even above the brim.

Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,

Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

And so I dream of going back to be.

It's when I'm weary of considerations,

And life is too much like a pathless wood

Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

Broken across it, and one eye is weeping

From a twig's having lashed across it open.

I'd like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:

I don't know where it's likely to go better.

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Charlotte Mew – A Farewell

Remember me and smile, as smiling too,

I have remembered things that went their way--

The dolls with which I grew too wise to play--

Or over-wise--kissed, as children do,

And so dismissed them; yes, even as yoy

Have done with this poor piece of painted clay--

Not wantonly, but wisely, shall we say?

As one who, haply, tunes his heart anew.

Only I wish her eyes may not be blue,

The eyes of a new angel. Ah! she may

Miss something that I found,--perhaps the clue

To those long silences of yours, which grew

Into one word. And should she not be gay,

Poor lady! Well, she too must have her day.