Trees Against The Sky

On National Poetry Day, a poem about trees and nature

Trees Against The Sky

Edge of Wood in Cumbria

Pines against the sky,

Pluming the purple hill;

Pines . . . and I wonder why,

Heart, you quicken and thrill?

Wistful heart of a boy,

Fill with a strange sweet joy,

Lifting to Heaven nigh -

Pines against the sky.

Palms against the sky,

Failing the hot, hard blue;

Stark on the beach I lie,

Dreaming horizons new;

Heart of my youth elate,

Scorning a humdrum fate,

Keyed to adventure high -

Palms against the sky.

Oaks against the sky,

Ramparts of leaves high-hurled,

Staunch to stand and defy

All the winds of the world;

Stalwart and proud and free,

Firing the man in me

To try and again to try -

Oaks against the sky.

Olives against the sky

Of evening, limpidly bright;

Tranquil and soft and shy,

Dreaming in amber light;

Breathing the peace of life,

Ease after toil and strife . . .

Hark to their silver sigh!

Olives against the sky.

Cypresses glooming the sky,

Stark at the end of the road;

Failing and faint am I,

Lief to be eased of my load;

There where the stones peer white

in the last of the silvery light,

Quiet and cold I'll lie -

Cypresses etching the sky.

Trees, trees against the sky -

O I have loved them well!

There are pleasures you cannot buy,

Treasurers you cannot sell,

And not the smallest of these

Is the gift and glory of trees. . . .

So I gaze and I know now why

It is good to live - and to die. . . .

Trees and the Infinite Sky.

 Robert William Service (1874-1958)

Oscar Wilde's Birthday

Oscar Wilde
(16 October 1854 - 30 November 1900)
 Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet.

Oscar Wilde is famous for his plays, witticisms and some of his poems such as 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol.'  But there are other writings of his that are overshadowed by his more popular works.  He is associated is the drawing room and dinner party, social circles, but there was another side to him.  His love of nature comes across in this beautiful poem of his that I recently found and it has quickly become a favourite.

 We Are Made One with What We Touch and See 

We are resolved into the supreme air,
We are made one with what we touch and see,
With our heart's blood each crimson sun is fair,
With our young lives each spring-impassioned tree
Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range
The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change.

With beat of systole and of diastole
One grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart,
And mighty waves of single Being roll
From nerveless germ to man, for we are part
Of every rock and bird and beast and hill,
One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill

One sacrament are consecrate, the earth
Not we alone hath passions hymeneal,
The yellow buttercups that shake for mirth
At daybreak know a pleasure not less real
Than we do, when in some fresh-blossoming wood
We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good

Is the light vanished from our golden sun,
Or is this daedal-fashioned earth less fair,
That we are nature's heritors, and one
With every pulse of life that beats the air?
Rather new suns across the sky shall pass,
New splendour come unto the flower, new glory to the grass.

And we two lovers shall not sit afar,
Critics of nature, but the joyous sea
Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star
Shoot arrows at our pleasure! We shall be
Part of the mighty universal whole,
And through all Aeons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul!

We shall be notes in that great Symphony
Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,
And all the live World's throbbing heart shall be
One with our heart, the stealthy creeping years
Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die,
The Universe itself shall be our Immortality!

Star Gazing

 

Closing the curtains last night, my eyes were drawn to the sky which was a mass of glittering stars.  So I went outside and 

"I stood and stared; the sky was lit,

The sky was stars all over it,

I stood, I knew not why,

Without a wish, without a will, 

I stood upon that silent hill

And stared into the sky until 

My eyes were blind with stars and still 

I stared into the sky."

(Ralph Hodgson,1871-1962)

I stayed for quite a while, mesmerised by the scene above my head.  How many times have I seen stars across my life? - yet, a star-filled sky moves me, affects me as though each sighting was the first.  

The gems twinkling under the lights of their display cases in jewellers' shop windows don't arrest my attention or stop me in my tracks as I pass by.  But these heavenly bodies that are so far away draw me to them, have a magnetic pull on my heart and soul that have me standing or sitting until my neck hurts and I am numb with cold.  Even then, it is difficult to leave their company and go back indoors.  

I opened the curtains before getting into bed so that I could fall asleep with my last memory of yesterday being a glimpse of that star-filled sky.

Nature Worship

"Not to worship the sun and moon and earth and sea, and each one of the planets and stars, is to make a pompous ass of yourself."

John Cowper Powys

(In Defence of Sensuality)

December Sunrise

(Photo - Wikimedia Commons)

I watched the sun rise this morning, and I do not have the words to convey what I saw.  The adjectives, descriptive terms and analogies ran through my mind but not one can do justice to what I witnessed.  I cannot draw or paint to show you the beauty of the morning so I must use words, however inadequate, to describe the scene.

At first, a sea of pinks and purples ran across the dark sky and a red glow appeared along the horizon.  This grew in intensity and burnt orange-red, upwards and outwards, until looking at the sky in the east was like looking into a burning fire.  The sun peeped over the hill, bright gold, against the flaming backdrop.

I moved cross the bedroom to get a better view and saw the sun behind a line of silhouetted trees. It climbed higher in the sky between the two extended main branches of an oak and appeared as though it was enveloped and nestled by the limbs of the tree.  I wondered how many years the mature oak has stood in that spot and the number of times the rising sun cast its light on it. The thought struck me that no matter how long I live, I will never see as many sunrises as the oak tree.  

From the moment I stopped to look at the sky, the ‘to do’ list had tugged at my conscience like an impatient child tugs on its parent’s hand.  Now, I dismissed it from my mind and continued looking out the window.  Yes, there are things to do and places to be but I have only a limited number of sunrises that I can watch, finite opportunities to drink in the beauty and timelessness of nature.  I didn’t waste time this morning nor was I idling; I was living - truly living, if only for a few moments before the mundane took over.