Pet Portraits - Nature Poetry

Pet Portraits - Poetry

Isabel Clark BA (Hons) Fine Art

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from the Lady of the Lake

Boon nature scattered, free and wild,

Each plant or flower, the mountain's child.

Here eglantine embalmed the air,

Hawthorn and hazel mingled there;

The primrose pale, and violet flower,

Found in such cliff a narrow bower;

Fox-glove and night-shade, side by side,

Emblems of punishment and pride,

Grouped their dark hues with every stain

The weather-beaten crags retain.

With boughs that quaked at every breath,

Grey birch and aspen wept beneath,

Aloft, the ash and warrior oak

Cast anchor in the rifted rock;

And, higher yet, the pine-tree hung

His shattered trunk, and frequent flung,

Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high,

His boughs athwart the narrowed sky.

Highest of all, where white peaks glanced,

Where glistening streamers waved and danced.

The wanderer's eye could barely view

The summer heaven's delicious blue;

So wondrous wild, the whole might seem

The scenery of a fairy dream.

George Gordon, Lord Byron

From Canto IV

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep Sea, and music in its roar;

I love not Man the less, but Nature more,

From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the Universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean - roll!

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;

Man marks the earth with ruin - his control

Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain

The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain

A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,

When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,

Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

His steps are not upon thy paths, - thy fields

Are not a spoil for him, - thou dost arise

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields

For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,

Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,

And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray

And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies

His petty hope in some near port or bay,

And dashest him again to earth: - there let him lay.