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= = =Poems About Nature= Evan Lyle

==== I decided to choose nature as my theme because my favorite poems to read are about nature. The first poem I chose, Landcrab by Margaret Atwood, describes the land crab as a small demon and a voracious eater. The next poem is Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost. This poem compares spring to gold and the general idea of the poem is nothing good ever lasts. The third poem is To Autumn by John Keats. This poem is the author's point of view that autumn is the best season of the year. The last poem is A Noiseless Patient Spider by Walt Whitman. It is about a spider spinning a web. ====



Landcrab
A lie, that we come from water. The truth is we were born from stones, dragons, the sea's teeth, as you testify, with your crust and jagged scissors.

Hermit, hard socket for a timid eye you're s soft gut scuttling sideways, a bone skull, round bone on the prowl. Wolf of treeroots and gravelly holes, a mount on stilts, the husk of a small demon.

Attack, voracious eating, and flight: it's a sound routine for staying alive on edges. Then there's the tide, and that dance you do for the moon on wet sand, claws raised to fend off your mate, your coupling a quick dry clatter of rocks. For mammals with their lobes and bulbs, scruples and warm milk, you've nothing but contempt.

Here you are, a frozen scowl targeted in flashlight, then gone: a piece of what we are, not all, my stunted child, my momentary face in the mirror, my tiny nightmare

-Margaret Atwood



Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature's first green is gold Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

- Robert Frost



To Autumn
- John Keats
 * SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness! || ||
 * Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; || ||
 * Conspiring with him how to load and bless || ||
 * With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; || ||
 * To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, || ||
 * And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; || ||
 * To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells || ||
 * With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, || ||
 * And still more, later flowers for the bees, || ||
 * Until they think warm days will never cease, || ||
 * For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. || ||
 * Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? || ||
 * Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find || ||
 * Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, || ||
 * Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; || ||
 * Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, || ||
 * Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook || ||
 * Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers; || ||
 * And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep || ||
 * Steady thy laden head across a brook; || ||
 * Or by a cider-press, with patient look, || ||
 * Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours. || ||
 * Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? || ||
 * Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— || ||
 * While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day, || ||
 * And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; || ||
 * Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn || ||
 * Among the river sallows, borne aloft || ||
 * Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; || ||
 * And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; || ||
 * Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft || ||
 * The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft; || ||
 * And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. || ||
 * The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft; || ||
 * And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. || ||



A Noiseless Patient Spider
A noisless, patient spider, I mark'd, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated; Mark'd how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding, It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;

Ever unreeling them--ever tirelessly speeding them. And you, O my Soul, where you stand, Surrounded, surrounded,in measureless oceans of space, Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,--seeking the spheres, to connect them; Till the bridge you will need, be form'd--till the ductile anchor hold; Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.

-Walt Whitman

==All of these poem's general idea's are about nature. But some use nature as a metaphor for something else like "Nothing Gold Can Stay" and "A Noiseless Patient Spider". In "Nothing Gold Can Stay the poet uses nature to show that nothing good ever lasts. In "A Noiseless Patient Spider" the poet uses the image of a spider spinning a web to describe how he feels lost. While To Autumn is a happy poem, Landcrab is an angry poem.==