Fifty Shades of Nature

By John Keats, John Clare and Henry David Thoreau

Our senses revel in the incomparable majesty of the work of Mother Nature. The structure of the landscape, the multi-coloured mantle of trees and fauna, the myriad animals that wander and inhabit this glorious Earth. Nature conducts symphonies of sound as her world goes from day into the inky embrace of night.

Our ears and eyes are constantly bathed in the wonder of her ways; the soft drizzle of rain from soft grey clouds, a wave caressing the shore and the ravenous colours of a departing sunset.

Her invisible heartbeat is everywhere and for everyone. Indeed, whenever we look and listen to the vastness of Nature’s beauty she can placate our anger and soothe our pain, despite our knowledge of her destructive forces that create myriad tragedies. Still her vistas can energise us, feed our hearts and souls and prompt us to muse on the mysteries of life and death.

Our sense of wonder is sometimes hard to describe, our feelings can overwhelm us or even leave us mute in astonishment. However, help is at hand. Our classic poets including the likes of Wordsworth, Whitman, Clare, and Dickinson use words in wondrous way to open our eyes and ears to the bounty and the plenty of Nature in fifty timeless classic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Portable Poetry
• Release date: Nov 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781835470312

John Keats

Born in London in 1795, John Keats is one of the most popular of the Romantic poets of the 19th century. During his short life his work failed to achieve literary acclaim, but after his death in 1821 his literary reputation steadily gained pace, inspiring many subsequent poets and students alike.

Book preview

Fifty Shades of Nature

An Introduction

Our senses revel in the incomparable majesty of the work of Mother Nature.  The structure of the landscape, the multi-coloured mantle of trees and fauna, the myriad animals that wander and inhabit this glorious Earth. Nature conducts symphonies of sound as her world goes from day into the inky embrace of night.

Our ears and eyes are constantly bathed in the wonder of her ways; the soft drizzle of rain from soft grey clouds, a wave caressing the shore and the ravenous colours of a departing sunset.

Her invisible heartbeat is everywhere and for everyone.  Indeed, whenever we look and listen to the vastness of Nature’s beauty she can placate our anger and soothe our pain, despite our knowledge of her destructive forces that create myriad tragedies.  Still her vistas can energise us, feed our hearts and souls and prompt us to muse on the mysteries of life and death.

Our sense of wonder is sometimes hard to describe, our feelings can overwhelm us or even leave us mute in astonishment.  However, help is at hand.  Our classic poets including the likes of Wordsworth, Whitman, Clare, and Dickinson use words in wondrous way to open our eyes and ears to the bounty and the plenty of Nature in fifty timeless classic.

Index of Contents

from Song Of Myself by Walt Whitman

Nature's Hymn to the Deity by John Clare

On a Lane in Spring by John Clare

Lines Written in Early Spring by William Wordsworth

An April Day by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

An April Afternoon by Alexander Anderson

A Rainy Day in April by Francis Ledwidge

In May by William Henry Davies

The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy

The Thrush's Nest by John Clare

To a Skylark by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats

Sonnet LVII - Summit of Skiddaw, July 7th 1838 by Henry Alford

Nature, The Gentlest Mother by Emily Dickinson

A July Afternoon by the Pond by Walt Whitman

An August Evening, 1865 by Carolyn Clive

The Summer Rain by Henry David Thoreau

August Moonrise by Sara Teasdale

In Autumn Moonlight by Robert Seymour Bridges

Daylight and Moonlight by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

At the Sunrise, 1848 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

After Sunset by William Allingham

Across the Red Sky by Katherine Mansfield

In the Fields by Charlotte Mew

Evening by Paul Laurence Dunbar

I Have Heard the Sunset Song of the Birches by Stephen Crane

Trees by Joyce Kilmer

Binsey Poplars by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Daffodils by William Wordsworth

Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Nature's Lady by George Eliot

On the Seashore by Rabindranath Tagore

The Dark Blue Sea by Byron

By the Sea by Christina Georgina Rossetti

The Little Waves of Breffney by Eva Gore-Booth

The Awakening River by Katherine Mansfield

The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W B Yeats

The Cloud on the Mountain by Alama Iqbal

Sonnet 33 - Full Many a Glorious Morning Have I Seen by William Shakespeare

Tell Me Not Here, It Needs Not Saying by A E Housman

The Autumn by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Ode Written on the First of December by Robert Southey

Winters Naked Wood by Daniel Sheehan

Frost At Midnight by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Snow Storm by Ralph Waldo Emerson

from The Happy Farmer by Iolo Morganwg