Nature Poems

While researching poetry, it's been quite difficult to read as I don't understand a lot of it. However, I've come across this book, The Poetry of Nature by Henry Van Dyke (1909).
Here's my 3 favourite poems from it:

UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE

UNDER the greenwood tree

Who loves to lie with me,

And turn his merry note

Unto the sweet bird's throat

Come hither, come hither, come hither !

Here shall we see

No enemy

But winter and rough weather.

Who doth ambition shun

And loves to live i' the sun,

Seeking the food he eats

And pleas'd with what he gets

Come hither, come hither, come hither !

Here shall he see

No enemy

But winter and rough weather.

As Ton Like It, n. v.

I first picked this because of the repeated line, 'come hither'. However, I also like the descriptions being used for the tree as if it is a person.

THE THROSTLE
" SUMMER is coming, summer is coming.

I know it, I know it, I know it.
Light again, leaf again, life again, love again,"

Yes, my wild little Poet.

Sing the new year in under the blue.

Last year you sang it as gladly.
" New, new, new, new ! " Is it then so new

That you should carol so madly ?

" Love again, song again, nest again, young again,'

Never a prophet so crazy !
And hardly a daisy as yet, little friend,

See, there is hardly a daisy

" Here again, here, here, here, happy year ! "
O warble unchidden, unbidden !

Summer is coming, is coming, my dear,
And all the winters are hidden.

LORD TENNYSON

I like the movement and rhythm of this poem and the odd few words or lines being repeated. I also find it interesting how the word 'again' has been used a lot meaning Summer is being repeated.

SONG OF THE BROOK

I COME from haunts of coot and hern,

I make a sudden sally,

And sparkle out among the fern,

To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,

Or slip between the ridges,

By twenty thorps, a little town,

And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on for ever.

I chatter over stony ways,

In little sharps and trebles,

I bubble into eddying bays,

I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret

By many a field and fallow,

And many a fairy foreland set

With willow- weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow

To join the brimming river ;

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on for ever.

I wind about, and in and out,

With here a blossom sailing,

And here and there a lusty trout,

And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake

Upon me, as I travel

With many a silvery waterbreak

Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow

To join the brimming river ;

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on for ever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,

I slide by hazel covers ;

I move the sweet forget-me-nots

That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,

Among my skimming swallows ;

I make the netted sunbeam dance

Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars

In brambly wildernesses ;

I linger by my shingly bars ;

I loiter round my cresses ;

And out again I curve and flow

To join the brimming river ;

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on for ever.

LORD TENNYSON 

In this poem, I like the repition in this of the line, 'But I go on forever.' I also like the idea of the waves in the river and the motion of them repeating forever.

Tammi.