Birds
Render words
About poetic craft
Dull.
Am I daft
To seek
For knowledge in a book
When I could upon nature look
And hear the birds speak?
On Reading A Book About Poetic Craft
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Tag Archives: nature
The Delight Of Snow
The churchyard is shrouded in snow.
Trees stand stark against the white.
I know
The delight
Of snow
Rain
“Rain” was written some 4 years ago and does not currently appear in any of my books. Below is a recording of me reading the poem,
Were I To Walk Barefoot
Were I to walk barefoot
In these leaves
On this cold
Sunny day,
People would say
“He is mad”.
Yet I should be glad
To be free
As the windblown tree
“The Sigh That Heaves The Grasses” By A E Housman
The sigh that heaves the grasses
Whence thou wilt never rise
Is of the air that passes
And knows not if it sighs.
The diamond tears adorning
Thy low mound on the lea,
Those are the tears of morning,
That weeps, but not for thee.
—
I like the unsentimental nature of this poem. As with much of Housman’s verse, there is no sentimentality here. Some poets attribute human qualaties to the natural world. Not so Housman. In “The Sigh That Heaves The Grasses”, the forces of nature: (the air and the dew), have no awareness of themselves, nor of the dead who sleeps in the “low mound on the lea” The morning dew resembles human tears shed for the dead, but it is not (and can not) be so, for the dew is not human.
A Bird Sang
A bird sang
In the churchyard as I
Passed by.
A thought unbidden sprang
Into my heart.
For all my art
I know that I shall die.
Hibernation
It is cold.
Should I be bold
And go outside?
Or like a tortoise, hibernate?
I can not decide.
It is late
In the year.
A thought most drear
Does take
Hold .
Not all tortoises awake
From the cold.
I pray
For a spring day.
Butterfly
A butterfly flits from flower to flower.
It’s hour
‘Tis brief,
But man knows grief
These Trees
These trees
Ask nothing of me.
The rain
Does not disdain
Me, so why do I
With wood nymphs dally
And tally
The cost of dry
Flowers?
So many hours
Spent
Incomplete,
Watering things replete
With artificial scent
Did You Hear The Owl?
“Did you hear the owl?” I said, as we sat in my living room.
(It will be over soon.
The prey caught
I thought).
“No” you replied.
Twice more the bird cried
But you heard
Not a word
He said.
The bed
Was hot
And the owl you did not see
Forgot by me.
K Morris - Poet 