The poets and artists featured “Flowers, Butterflies, and Ecoscapes”  have made important observations about the world of nature and its impact on the emotional and spiritual landscapes of individuals.

For the writer, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), the flowers, animals, mountains, rivers, and indeed, all of of the natural world reflected the wisdom of the Creator. Each part of nature represents a divine harmony that reflects larger universal truths about life and the mysteries of the universe.  In this excerpt his 1836 book Nature, he connects art and nature to existential themes. Nature can be viewed as a grand work of art:

“A work of art is an abstract or epitome of the world. It is the result or expression of nature, in miniature. For, although the works of nature are innumerable and all different, the result or the expression of them all is similar and single. Nature is a sea of forms radically alike and even unique. A leaf, a sun-beam, a landscape, the ocean, make an analogous impression on the mind. What is common to them all,—that perfectness and harmony, is beauty. The standard of beauty is the entire circuit of natural forms,—the totality of nature; which the Italians expressed by defining beauty “il piu nell’ uno.” Nothing is quite beautiful alone: nothing but is beautiful in the whole. A single object is only so far beautiful as it suggests this universal grace. The poet, the painter, the sculptor, the musician, the architect, seek each to concentrate this radiance of the world on one point, and each in his several work to satisfy the love of beauty which stimulates him to produce. Thus is Art, a nature passed through the alembic of man. Thus in art, does nature work through the will of a man filled with the beauty of her first works.” (Emerson, Chapter 3, “Beauty” in Nature, 1836).

Note about the Painting

“A pink carnation, a white rose, and a yellow tulip with red stripes lie in front of a basket with flowers, that would not bloom together: roses, forget-me-nots, lilies-of-the-valley, a cyclamen, a violet, a hyacinth, and tulips. Insects, short-lived like flowers, remind of the brevity of life and the transience of its beauty”.

“The flower that smiles to-day” by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Examples of Flowers and their Symbolic Meaning

*To read more about flower symbolism and the language of flowers, please open the links here,  here,

and here.

Additional References:

A-Z of Flower Symbolism

Flower Symbolism of the Great Masters  by Elizabeth Haig

Video: The Magic of the Night Blooming Cereus Flower

“Two Butterflies went out at Noon— (533)” by Emily Dickinson

Two Butterflies went out at Noon—
And waltzed above a Farm—
Then stepped straight through the Firmament
And rested on a Beam—

And then—together bore away
Upon a shining Sea—
Though never yet, in any Port—
Their coming mentioned—be—

If spoken by the distant Bird—
If met in Ether Sea
By Frigate, or by Merchantman—
No notice—was—to me.

A Rose Has Thorns As Well As Honey 

by Christina Rossetti

The Transformative Power of Nature Poetry and Art

Artists and poets throughout time have revered the beauty of nature and expressed their feelings in their work. Romantic poets such as John Keats, William Wordsworth, and William Blake wrote about the majestic quality of the landscape and the transformative power of nature to inspire. Great 19th century poets such as Emily Dickinson, Christina Rosetti, Sara Teasdale, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman wrote transcendental and metaphysical poems about nature as a reflection of a higher power. We can revisit these poems to discover new meaning and relevance for 2023-a time where, more than ever, empathy and care for non-human beings and the environment are urgently needed. Collectively, these poems highlighted individual experience, intuition, the presence of a higher power/order found in nature, and the essential interconnection between humans and nature. There is a lyrical and straightforward style to their poems that make them accessible for readers today. In art, the paintings of Rosa Bonheur, Vincent Van Gogh, Albert Bierstadt, Caspar David Friedrich, and Johann Christian Dahl exemplify the mystical beauty of landscapes and non-human life.

You can select the poems and art images that you find most compelling and further research their origins and relevance for today. You can find other art images (classic and contemporary) that would best complement the poems you found or created yourself.

“The Night-Blooming Cereus” by Harriet Monroe

FLOWER of the moon!
Still white is her brow whom we worshiped on earth long ago;
Yea, purer than pearls in deep seas, and more virgin than snow.
The dull years veil their eyes from her shining, and vanish afraid,
Nor profane her with age—the immortal, nor dim her with shade.

It is we are unworthy, we worldlings, to dwell in her ways;
We have broken her altars and silenced her voices of praise.
She hath hearkened to singing more silvern, seen raptures more bright;
To some planet more pure she hath fled on the wings of the night,—
Flower of the moon!

Yet she loveth the world that forsook her, for, lo! once a year
She, Diana, translucent, pale, scintillant, down from her sphere
Floateth earthward like star-laden music, to bloom in a flower,
And our hearts feel the spell of the goddess once more for an hour.

See! she sitteth in splendor nor knoweth desire nor decay,
And the night is a glory around her more bright than the day,
And her breath hath the sweetness of worlds where no sorrow is known;
And we long as we worship to follow her back to her own,—
Flower of the moon!

“The Night is Darkening Round Me” by Emily Brontë

“Letter from Town: The Almond Tree” by D. H. Lawrence

You promised to send me some violets. Did you forget?
White ones and blue ones from under the orchard hedge?
Sweet dark purple, and white ones mixed for a pledge
Of our early love that hardly has opened yet.

Here there’s an almond tree—you have never seen
Such a one in the north—it flowers on the street, and I stand
Every day by the fence to look up for the flowers that expand
At rest in the blue, and wonder at what they mean.

Under the almond tree, the happy lands
Provence, Japan, and Italy repose,
And passing feet are chatter and clapping of those
Who play around us, country girls clapping their hands.

You, my love, the foremost, in a flowered gown,
All your unbearable tenderness, you with the laughter
Startled upon your eyes now so wide with hereafter,
You with loose hands of abandonment hanging down.

Gardens of Contemplation and Imagination

In Andrew Marvell’s 1681 poem “The Garden,” a contrast is made between the quiet of contemplation and inner peace and the active world of work, ambition, and worldly acquisition. How important is contemplation, inner peace, and reflection today? Through the garden imagery, Marvell is analyzing different emotional and cognitive states.   In 2023, Marvell’s message takes on a new meaning. Following the poem are different artistic representations of gardens, landscape scenes, and related nature images. How connected are you to nature? Do you have a garden? Do you grow flowers, vegetables, and herbs? How disconnected, in your view, are people to nature? What are the benefits of nature? As educators, how can we encourage an awareness of the interconnectedness of ecosystems locally and globally? How can we make both a self-directed and collaborative effort to reverse planetary devastation and restore natural landscapes, water, natural wildlife, flowers, and fauna? What steps have been taken and what more steps need to be taken to activate personal and social change? Will the “grandeur of nature” become a distant memory and a “quaint artifact” of the past? In Last child in the woods, Richard Louv writes:

Within the space of a few decades, the way children understand and experience nature has changed radically. The polarity of the relationship has been reversed. Today, kids are aware of the global threats to the environment—but their physical contact, their intimacy with nature, fading. That’s exactly the opposite of how it was when I was a child.

As a boy, I was unaware that my woods were ecologically connected with any other forests. Nobody  in the 1950s talked about acid rain or holes in the ozone layer or global warming. But I knew my woods and my fields; I knew every bend in the creek and dip in the beaten dirt paths. I wandered those woods even in my dreams. A kid today can likely tell you about the Amazon rain forest—-but not about the last time he or she explored the woods in solitude, or lay in a field listening to the wind and watching the clouds move….(Louv, pp.1-2, 2005).

Indigenous knowledge keeper, war veteran, and Grandfather/Elder Wanbdi Wakita’s words of warning are a plea for greater ecological awareness and empathy for all living things:

Yesterday I made ceremony for the lightening, the thunder, the rain, the wind. I offered them food. I offered them water. I offered them tobacco. So I don’t know if you know this or not, we’re in deep trouble with this land. This planet Deep trouble. I used to say 30 years from now, but I see it’s moving very fast that all people are going to suffer. We’re not listening, that’s why. We’re not listening to Creator. We’re not listening to our ancestors. We’re not listening to Mother Earth. We’re not listening to Grandmother Earth. -Wandbi Wakita, August, 5, 2022.

Retrieved August 10th, Winnipeg Free Press. Arts & Life, Section C, p.1.

Reflections

As you read the following poems and prose and view the art images, jot down your thoughts and feelings that may arise. Which texts do you find more compelling? Why? Are there other texts that come to your mind as you read and view the following?

“The Garden” by Andrew Marvell

“An October Garden” by Christina Rossetti

In my Autumn garden I was fain
To mourn among my scattered roses;
Alas for that last rosebud which uncloses
To Autumn’s languid sun and rain
When all the world is on the wane!
Which has not felt the sweet constraint of June,
Nor heard the nightingale in tune.

Broad-faced asters by my garden walk,
You are but coarse compared with roses:
More choice, more dear that rosebud which uncloses,
Faint-scented, pinched, upon its stalk,
That least and last which cold winds balk;
A rose it is though least and last of all,
A rose to me though at the fall.

“Flower” by Rabindranath Tagore

Pluck this little flower and take it, delay not! I fear lest it
droop and drop into the dust.

I may not find a place in thy garland, but honour it with a touch of
pain from thy hand and pluck it. I fear lest the day end before I am
aware, and the time of offering go by.

Though its colour be not deep and its smell be faint, use this flower
in thy service and pluck it while there is time..

“An April Morning” by Bliss Carman

ONCE more in misted April
The world is growing green.
Along the winding river
The plumey willows lean.
Beyond the sweeping meadows
The looming mountains rise,
Like battlements of dreamland
Against the brooding skies.
In every wooded valley
The buds are breaking through,
As though the heart of all things
No languor ever knew.
The golden-wings and bluebirds
Call to their heavenly choirs.
The pines are blued and drifted
With smoke of brushwood fires.
And in my sister’s garden
Where little breezes run,
The golden daffodillies
Are blowing in the sun.

Symbolism and Meaning of Flowers

You can explore the rich symbolism of flowers throughout the ages. What are your favourite flowers? What does each flower represent to you?

The Lotus Flower:

In Buddhist mythology, the lotus flower symbolizes purity, inner strength, and enlightenment in a world of despair and tumult. Despite growing out of heavy mud, it arises beautiful and clean. The petals of the lotus symbolize the Buddha’s teachings and the multi-layered meaning of these teachings (Xueting C. Ni, Chinese myths, pp. 101-102 Amber Books).

 

 

 

C.A. Smith’s poem is an interesting counterpart to Alma-Tadema’s painting as it focusses more on the personality of the emperor, who is seen as something of a decadent aesthete. An exhaustive search has not turned up an individual called ‘Christophe des Lauriëres’, and is assumed by this author to be Clark Ashton Smith writing pseudonymously.

“Heliogabalus” by Clark Ashton Smith (Translated from Christope des Laurieres)

He, the supreme idealist of Sin,
Through scarlet days a white perfection sought
To make of lyric deed and lyric thought
One music of perverse accord, wherein
The songless blatancy and banal din
Of all the world should perish: he had wrought
From Vice a pure, Pentelic Venus, fraught
With lines of light and terror, that should win
The plaudits of the stars. . . . But prevalent
For him, above the achievable desire,
And Life perfectible by Sin and Art,
Such lusts as leave the Titans impotent
Allured, and Life and Sin, in worlds apart,
Were fair with suns of quintessential fire.

“The Rose of the World” by W. B. Yeats

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,
Mournful that no new wonder may betide,
Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,
And Usna’s children died.
We and the labouring world are passing by:
Amid men’s souls, that waver and give place
Like the pale waters in their wintry race,
Under the passing stars, foam of the sky,
Lives on this lonely face.
Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode:
Before you were, or any hearts to beat,
Weary and kind one lingered by His seat;
He made the world to be a grassy road
Before her wandering feet.

Imaginative Flower Illustrations by Walter Crane

A Floral Fantasy in an Old English Garden, set forth in verses & coloured designs, by Walter Crane;1899; Harper, London.

About the Artist Walter Crane

“Walter Crane (15 August 1845 – 14 March 1915) was an English artist and book illustrator. He is considered to be the most influential, and among the most prolific, children’s book creators of his generation[1] and, along with Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway, one of the strongest contributors to the child’s nursery motif that the genre of English children’s illustrated literature would exhibit in its developmental stages in the later 19th century.

Crane’s work featured some of the more colourful and detailed beginnings of the child-in-the-garden motifs that would characterize many nursery rhymes and children’s stories for decades to come. He was part of the Arts and Crafts movement and produced an array of paintings, illustrations, children’s books, ceramic tiles, wallpapers and other decorative arts. Crane is also remembered for his creation of a number of iconic images associated with the international Socialist movement.”

• Additional Resource: Spencer, I. (1975) Walter Crane. MacMillan Publishing. Co, Inc. 
• Walter Crane’s Painting Book (1889)

 

“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth

Arthur Rackham, Illustration of Titania from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1909. Internet Archive. Public Domain. By Arthur Rackham – Internet Archive, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44057584

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
 Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
 Quite overcanopied with luscious woodbine,
260 With sweet muskroses, and with eglantine.

From William Shakespeare’s

A Midsummer NIght’s Dream (Oberon, Act 2, scene 1)

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite overcanopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet muskroses, and with eglantine.
 There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
 Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight.
 And there the snake throws her enameled skin,
 Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.
265 And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes
 And make her full of hateful fantasies.
 Take thou some of it, and seek through this grove.

 

Produced by: Charlene Taylor, Linda Cantoni and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at Distributed Proofreaders. (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive).

“In the Heart of a Rose” by George Marion McClellan

I will hide my soul and its mighty love
In the bosom of this rose,
And its dispensing breath will take
My love where’er it goes.

And perhaps she’ll pluck this very rose,
And quick as blushes start,
Will breathe my hidden secret in
Her unsuspecting heart.

And there I will live in her embrace
And the realm of sweetness there,
Enamored with an ecstasy
Of bliss beyond compare.

“The Cycle” by Theodore Roethke

Dark water, underground,
Beneath the rock and clay,
Beneath the roots of trees,
Moved into common day,
Rose from a mossy mound
In mist that sun could seize.

The fine rain coiled in a cloud
Turned by revolving air
Far from that colder source
Where elements cohere
Dense in the central stone.
The air grew loose and loud.

Then, with diminished force,
The full rain fell straight down,
Tunneled with lapsing sound
Under even the rock-shut ground,
Under a river’s source,
Under primeval stone.

(p.48, The Collected Poems of Theodore Roetke, Anchor Books, 1975).

“Water Lily” by Rainer Maria Rilke (Translated by A. Poulin)

My whole life is mine, but whoever says so
will deprive me, for it is infinite.
The ripple of water, the shade of the sky
are mine; it is still the same, my life.

No desire opens me: I am full,
I never close myself with refusal-
in the rhythm of my daily soul
I do not desire-I am moved;

by being moved I exert my empire,
making the dreams of night real:
into my body at the bottom of the water
I attract the beyonds of mirrors…

“Water Lilies” by A.A. Milne

Where the water-lilies go
To and fro,
Rocking in the ripples of the water,
Lazy on a leaf lies the Lake King’s daugher,
And the faint winds shake her.
Who will come and take her?
I will! I will!
Keep still! Keep still!
Sleeping on a leaf lies the Lake King’s daughter. . . .
Then the wind comes skipping
To the lilies on the water;
And the kind winds wake her.
Now who will take her?
With a laugh she is slipping
Through the lilies on the water.
Wait! Wait!
Too late, too late!
Only the water-lilies go
To and fro,
Dipping, dipping,
To the ripples of the water.

Bird and Flower Illustrations by Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904)

“Orchids” by Theodore Roethke

They lean over the path,
Adder-mouthed,
Swaying close to the face,
Coming out, soft and deceptive,
Limp and damp, delicate as a young bird’s tongue;
Their fluttery fledgling lips
Move slowly,
Drawing in the warm air.The faint moon…

(SEE ROETHKE, p. 37, Collected Poems)

Cleveland Art Gallery Note about the Painting.

“Heade took the first of three trips to South America, with an amateur naturalist, the Reverend C. J. Fletcher, to do studies for a projected (though never published) book on hummingbirds. As an outgrowth of that experience, Heade made a large number of paintings of birds and flowers, especially orchids, in a tropical setting. In this way he combined his main interests of still life and landscape–a union of themes he maintained in his work into the 20th century. The paintings are characterized by meticulous and precise rendering of detail and high-keyed luminescent color.”

“Moss-Gathering” by Theodore Roethke

“Root Cellar” by Theodore Roethke

Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,
Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,
Shoots dangled and drooped,
Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,
Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.
And what a congress of stinks!
Roots ripe as old bait,
Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,
Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.
Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.

(From: The Collected Poems by Theodore Roethke (1975) New York: Anchor Books)

“Consider” by Christina Rossetti

Consider
The lilies of the field whose bloom is brief:—
We are as they;
Like them we fade away,
As doth a leaf.

Consider
The sparrows of the air of small account:
Our God doth view
Whether they fall or mount,—
He guards us too.

Consider
The lilies that do neither spin nor toil,
Yet are most fair:—
What profits all this care
And all this coil?

Consider
The birds that have no barn nor harvest-weeks;
God gives them food:—
Much more our Father seeks
To do us good.

SUMMER

“A Summer Wish” by Christina Rossetti

Live all thy sweet life through
Sweet Rose, dew-sprent,
Drop down thine evening dew
To gather it anew
When day is bright:
I fancy thou wast meant
Chiefly to give delight.

Sing in the silent sky,
Glad soaring bird;
Sing out thy notes on high
To sunbeam straying by
Or passing cloud;
Heedless if thou art heard
Sing thy full song aloud.

Post Impressionist Art of Georges Seurat

It took George Seurat two years to complete this painting and the content derived from his close observation of people enjoying an afternoon at a part Seurat created  the technique of “Pointillism” where brilliant colours and shapes are derived by applying tiny dots of painting to the canvas. Carolyn Schlam (2021)  further notes that:

“[George] Seurat is considered a Postimpressionist, a movement considered as a bridge between Impressionism and Fauvism. His compatriots include Paul Cezanne, Paul Gaugin, and Vincent Van Gogh. These artists, each in his own way, went beyond the airy light concentration of the Impressionist to give their paintings more of an illusion of form. Rather than hewing to the strict rendering of the subject of light, they introduced more expressive elements, like more geometric contouring and more amplified colour” (Schlam, 2022, p. 175).

A Rose by Emily Dickinson

A sepal, petal, and a thorn Upon a common summer’s morn, A flash of dew, a bee or two, A breeze A caper in the trees, — And I’m a rose!

Botanical Illustrations and the Biodiversity Heritage Library

         Intricate and beautifully illustrated 19th and 18th century books  of flowers, plants, insects, and birds can be a rich learning source for a comparative analysis of the natural flower ecosystems  -past, present, and future. Many of these illustrated texts are available online and links to the archival data bases are included in this section. Historic scientific illustrations can provide a foundation to compare the way our natural environment has changed over time. The Biodiversity Heritage Library  (BHL) is a valuable source of information with an extensive collections of digitized illustrations and texts about animal s, plants, and myriad life forms. Working with open access Internet sources such as Wikimedia Commons and the Smithsonian Institution, the BHL encourages awareness, insight, and discovery through free access to biodiversity knowledge. Interdisciplinary links between art, science, literature, and ecology can be made as learners embark on self-directed and collaborative projects.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Maria Sybilla Meriam (1647-1717)

One of the leading women artists was also a scientist. Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) painted meticulous depictions of insect metamorphosis and botanical diversity. Born in Frankfurt, Germany in the 17th century, Merian grew up in a family of artists and publishers. The artist and scientist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) was born in Frankfurt, Germany, into a middle-class family of publishers and artists. At the age of fifty-two, Merian travelled with her daughter to a Dutch Territory in South America. She continued to paint the incredible biodiversity of the flora and fauna in South America.

“Carnations” by Theodore Roethke

Pale blossoms, each balanced on a single jointed stem,
And leaves curled back in elaborate Corinthian scrolls;
And the air cool, as if drifting down from wet hemlocks,
Or rising out of ferns not far from water,
A crisp hyacinthine coolness,
Like that clear autumnal weather of eternity,
The windless perpetual morning above a September cloud.

The Dramatic Art of Martin Johnson Heade

“Largely forgotten by scholars and collectors after his death, Martin Johnson Heade was one of the most varied and inventive painters of the 19th century. He is now recognized as one of the most important American artists of his generation and unique in devoting equal time to landscape, marine and still-life subjects. Heade created evocative marsh scenes and powerful canvases of dramatic thunderstorms at sea that established him as a landscapist. At the same time, he produced scintillating Victorian flower still lifes and exquisite studies of South American hummingbirds, explorations that would culminate in the extraordinary, wholly original combination of jewel-like birds with lush, tropical orchids.”

“No Bird” by Theodore Roethke
Now here is peace for one who knew
The secret heart of sound;
The ear so delicate and true
Is pressed to noiseless ground.

“Carnations” by Theodore Roethke

Pale blossoms, each balanced on a single jointed stem,
The leaves curled back in elaborate Corinthian scrolls;
And the air cool, as if drifting down from wet hemlocks,
Or rising out of ferns not far from water,
A crisp hyacinthine coolness,
Like that clear autumnal weather of eternity,
The windless perpetual morning above a September cloud.

Museum Note about the Painting

“At the center of this scene, a lady leans on a bolster pillow and languidly holds out a filled cup. Making somewhat immodest eye contact with the viewer, she displays burn marks, associated with mystics and lovers, on her lower arms. A male figure in European dress and hat, perhaps a merchant, kneels before her. The other figures offer refreshments and conversation.”

Museum Note about the Ceramic

“Two small birds are perched within the tangle of carnation, tulip, and hyacinth stems on this colorful plate. A popular literary Ottoman literary trope, bird and flower designs were a pervasive decorative element on Iznik pottery of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.”

Connections and Impressions

“There Will Come Soft Rains” by Sara Teasdale

(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

The Nature Poems of Theodore Roethke

 Poets and novelists can be inspired by a painting or sculpture and likewise, a painter can describe a story in richly detailed ways that highlight new insights and understandings. Poems by Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) reflect an intermediary world as we travel through waking and sleeping. Roethke’s poem addresses existential themes that challenge readers to explore the delicate balance and interplay between our waking world, the world of nature, the world of work, the world of contemplation. The transitory world of life and the cycles and seasons of nature reflect our own inner spiritual journeys. Roethke’s poems illuminate sacred landscapes; the visual imagery in his poems enable us to imagine an idyllic  place of peace and contemplation. Each flower, each root, each plant, or vine is a microcosm of life.  Joy Harjo writes that “each (Roethke) poem is constructed of lines, of rhythms, and words that are sounds. Each poem is full of energy There’s form and there’s shape, like a house or a jukebox. Some formsare of contemporary design, like fee verse. “The Waking” is in an old French form, the villanelle. The form has to fit the content. The content needs a place to live.” (Harjo, in Paschen and Mosby, C. 2001 p. 181).

“Genesis” by Theodore Roethke

This elemental force
Was wrested from the sun;
A river’s leaping source
Is locked in narrow bone.
This wisdom floods the mind,
Invades quiescent blood;
A seed that swells the rind
To burst the fruit of good.
A pearl within the brain
Secretion of the sense,
Around a central grain
New meaning grows immense.

(from: The collected poems of Theodore Roethke, p. 17, Anchor Books, 1975).

“Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Man is his own star, and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man,
Commands all light, all influence, all fate;
Nothing to him falls early or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still….”

“Moving Forward” by Rainer Maria Rilke

The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening  out.
It seems that things are more like me now,
That I can see  farther  into paintings.
I feel closer to what language  can’t reach.
With my senses, as with birds, I climb
into the windy heaven, out of the oak,
in the ponds broken off from the sky
my falling sinks, as if standing  on fishes

“The Far Field” by Theodore Roethke

I dream of journeys repeatedly:
Of flying like a bat deep into a narrowing tunnel,
Of driving alone, without luggage, out a long peninsula,
The road lined with snow-laden second growth,
A fine dry snow ticking the windshield,
Alternate snow and sleet, no on-coming traffic,
And no lights behind, in the blurred side-mirror,
The road changing from glazed tarface to a rubble of stone,
Ending at last in a hopeless sand-rut,
Where the car stalls,
Churning in a snowdrift
Until the headlights darken.

Landscapes with Trees

As you view the following landscapes, you can explore some of these questions:

1. What is your relationship to nature? What values does your connection to nature represent to you?
2. How is the artist portraying the natural scenery that might include mountains, valleys, skies, clouds,  trees, rivers, and forests?
3. Some of the artists depict animals in their natural habitat. How have the habitats of many animals
4. Is the landscape more realistic or imaginary?
5. To what extent was “nature” viewed as something frightening and that needed to be controlled or destroyed? How have different attitudes towards nature impacted ecosystems?
6. How do the artists and writers evoke mood and emotion through their work?
7. Do any of the landscape images evoke memories that you have of similar places?
8. How are colours used to create emotions?
9. How do poets use symbolism and imagery to evoke emotion?
10. Is the artist portraying a particular season of the year (spring, summer, autumn, winter)?
11. How have our geographical landscapes changed over time? What factors contributed to these changes (e.g. erosion, climate change, industrialization, etc.).
12. To what extent are natural landscapes threatened today?
13. How do we repair the damage and build resilient ecosystems?
14. How do we mobilize individuals to take a greater initiative in sustainability?

“A Birthday” by Christina Rossetti

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a watered shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.

“The Trees’ Counselling” by Christina Rossetti

I was strolling sorrowfully
Thro’ the corn fields and the meadows;
The stream sounded melancholy,
And I walked among the shadows;
While the ancient forest trees
Talked together in the breeze;
In the breeze that waved and blew them,
With a strange weird rustle thro’ them.

Said the oak unto the others
In a leafy voice and pleasant:
“Here we all are equal brothers,
“Here we have nor lord nor peasant.
“Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring,
“Pass in happy following.
“Little winds may whistle by us,
“Little birds may overfly us;

“But the sun still waits in heaven
“To look down on us in splendour;
“When he goes the moon is given,
“Full of rays that he doth lend her:
“And tho’ sometimes in the night
“Mists may hide her from our sight,
“She comes out in the calm weather,
“With the glorious stars together.”

From the fruitage, from the blossom,
From the trees came no denying;
Then my heart said in my bosom:
“Wherefore art thou sad and sighing?
“Learn contentment from this wood
“That proclaimeth all states good;
“Go not from it as it found thee;
“Turn thyself and gaze around thee.”

And I turned: behold the shading
But showed forth the light more clearly;
The wild bees were honey-lading;
The stream sounded hushing merely,
And the wind not murmuring
Seemed, but gently whispering:
“Get thee patience; and thy spirit
“Shall discern in all things merit.”

The Ancient Life of Trees: Necessary for a Post-Human Era

New York Times Excerpt (Dr. Jared Farmer, 2022,  Elderflora: A Modern History of Ancient Trees.” Basic Books, 2022.)

Whole forests with fire-resistant giant sequoias up to 3,000 years in age have recently gone up in flames. Whole stands of drought-resistant Great Basin bristlecone pine, a species that can reach 5,000 years in age, have been sucked dry by bark beetles. Monumental baobabs, the longest-living flowering plants, buckle under the stress of drought in southern Africa. The iconic cedars of Mount Lebanon, ancient symbols of longevity, struggle in warmer, drier conditions. Millennial kauris in New Zealand and centenarian olive trees in Italy  succumb to invasive diseases.

Cumulatively, this is more than a cyclical turnover. This is a great diminution: fewer megaflora (massive trees), fewer elderflora (ancient trees), fewer old-growth forests, fewer ancient species, fewer species overall.

Although Earth’s “tree cover” — three trillion plants covering roughly 30 percent of all land — has expanded of late, the canopy increasingly consists of trees planted for timber, paper pulp and cooking oil and for services such as protecting soil from wind erosion and offsetting carbon emissions. It’s young stuff. Old-growth communities are scarce and getting scarce. Ancient trees provide services too, but really, they are gift givers. Of all their gifts, the greatest are temporal and ethical. They inspire long-term thinking and encourage us to be sapient. They engage our deepest faculties: to revere, analyze and meditate. If we can recognize how they call upon our ethical imperative to care for them, then we should slow down climate change now, and pay forward to people who will need a future planet with chronodiversity as well as biodiversity.

In Robert Frost’s poem “An Encounter” the tree is personified:

“An Encounter” by Robert Frost

Once on the kind of day called “weather breeder,”
When the heat slowly hazes and the sun
By its own power seems to be undone,
I was half boring through, half climbing through,
A swamp of cedar. Choked with oil of cedar
And scurf of plants, and weary and over-heated,
And sorry I ever left the road I knew,
I paused and rested on a sort of hook
That had me by the coat as good as seated,
And since there was no other way to look,
Looked up toward heaven, and there against the blue
Stood over me a resurrected tree,
A tree that had been down and raised again—
A barkless spectre. He had halted too,
As if for fear of treading upon me.
I saw the strange position of his hands—
Up at his shoulders, dragging yellow strands
Of wire with something in it from men to men.
“You here?” I said. “Where aren’t you nowadays?
And what’s the news you carry—if you know?
And tell me where you’re off for—Montreal?
Me? I’m not off for anywhere at all.
Sometimes I wander out of beaten ways
Half looking for the orchid Calypso.”

“Trees” by Bliss Carman

IN the Garden of Eden, planted by God,
There were goodly trees in the springing sod,-
Trees of beauty and height and grace,
To stand in splendor before His face.
Apple and hickory, ash and pear,
Oak and beech and the tulip rare,
The trembling aspen, the noble pine,
The sweeping elm by the river line;
Trees for the birds to build and sing,
And the lilac tree for a joy in spring;
Trees to turn at the frosty call
And carpet the ground for their Lord’s footfall;
Trees for fruitage and fire and shade,
Trees for the cunning builder’s trade;
Wood for the bow, the spear, and the flail,
The keel and the mast of the daring sail;
He made them of every grain and girth
For the use of man in the Garden of Earth.
Then lest the soul should not lift her eyes
From the gift to the Giver of Paradise,
On the crown of a hill, for all to see,
God planted a scarlet maple tree.

“The Mountain” by Emily Dickinson

The mountain sat upon the plain
In his eternal chair,
His observation omnifold,
His inquest everywhere.

The seasons prayed around his knees,
Like children round a sire:
Grandfather of the days is he,
Of dawn the ancestor.

“The Rainbow” by Christina Rossetti

Boats sail on the rivers,
And ships sail on the seas;
But clouds that sail across the sky
Are prettier than these.
There are bridges on the rivers,
As pretty as you please;
But the bow that bridges heaven,
And overtops the trees,
And builds a road from earth to sky
Is prettier far than these.

(From Evans, F. (2016), Favourite Poems: A Selection of the World’s Best-Loved Verse. Arcturus (Ed.). p.87.)

“The River” by Ralph Waldo Emerson

And I behold once more
My old familiar haunts; here the blue river,
The same blue wonder that my infant eye
Admired, sage doubting whence the traveller came,—
Whence brought his sunny bubbles ere he washed
The fragrant flag-roots in my father’s fields,
And where thereafter in the world he went.
Look, here he is, unaltered, save that now
He hath broke his banks and flooded all the vales
With his redundant waves……
Here is the rock where, yet a simple child,
I caught with bended pin my earliest fish,
Much triumphing, —and these the fields
Over whose flowers I chased the butterfly,
A blooming hunter of a fairy fine.
And hark! where overhead the ancient crows
Hold their sour conversation in the sky:—
These are the same, but I am not the same,
But wiser than I was, and wise enough
Not to regret the changes, tho’ they cost
Me many a sigh. Oh, call not Nature dumb;
These trees and stones are audible to me,
These idle flowers, that tremble in the wind,
I understand their faery syllables,
And all their sad significance. The wind,
That rustles down the well-known forest road—
It hath a sound more eloquent than speech.
The stream, the trees, the grass, the sighing wind,
All of them utter sounds of ’monishment
And grave parental love.
They are not of our race, they seem to say,
And yet have knowledge of our moral race,
And somewhat of majestic sympathy,
Something of pity for the puny clay,
That holds and boasts the immeasurable mind.
I feel as I were welcome to these trees
After long months of weary wandering,
Acknowledged by their hospitable boughs;
They know me as their son, for side by side,
They were coeval with my ancestors,
Adorned with them my country’s primitive times,
And soon may give my dust their funeral shade.

“I Live My Life in Widening Circles” by Rainer Maria Rilke

Retrieved-see the link here and here.

Additional Source: Anita Barrow and Joanna May, 1996, Rilke’s Book of Hours, Riverhead Books.

“The Life Being Lived” by Rainer Maria Rilke

And yet, though we strain
Against the deadening grip
Of daily necessity,
I sense that there is this mystery:
All life is being lived.
Who is living it, then?
Is it the things themselves,
Or something waiting inside them,
Like an unplayed melody in a flute?
Is it the winds blowing over the waters?
Is it the branches that signal to each other?
Is it flower
Interweaving their fragrances,
Or streets, as they wind through time?

(From Anita Barrow and Joanna May, 1996, Rilke’s Book of Hours Riverhead Books, p.48).

“Evening” by Rainer Maria Rilke

The bleak fields are asleep,
My heart alone wakes;
The evening in the harbour
Down his red sails takes.

Night, guardian of dreams,
Now wanders through the land;
The moon, a lily white,
Blossoms within her hand.

“Autumn” by Rainer Maria Rilke

The leaves fall, fall as from far,
Like distant gardens withered in the heavens;
They fall with slow and lingering descent.

And in the nights the heavy Earth, too, falls
From out the stars into the Solitude.

Thus all doth fall. This hand of mine must fall
And lo! the other one:—it is the law.
But there is One who holds this falling
Infinitely softly in His hands.

“Solitude” by Rainer Maria Rilke

Solitude is like a rain
That from the sea at dusk begins to rise;
It floats remote across the far-off plain
Upward into its dwelling-place, the skies,
Then o’er the town it slowly sinks again.
Like rain it softly falls at that dim hour
When ghostly lanes turn toward the shadowy morn;
When bodies weighed with satiate passion’s power
Sad, disappointed from each other turn;
When men with quiet hatred burning deep
Together in a common bed must sleep—
Through the gray, phantom shadows of the dawn
Lo! Solitude floats down the river wan …
Thus all doth fall. This hand of mine must fall
And lo! the other one:—it is the law.
But there is One who holds this falling
Infinitely softly in His hands.

‘In April” by Rainer Maria Rilke

“Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost

“What are Heavy?” by Christina Rossetti

What are heavy? Sea-sand and sorrow;
What are brief? To-day and to-morrow;
What are frail? Spring blossoms and youth;
What are deep? The ocean and truth.

“Counting-Out Rhyme” by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Silver bark of beech, and sallow
Bark of yellow birch and yellow
Twig of willow.

Stripe of green in moosewood maple,
Colour seen in leaf of apple,
Bark of popple.

Wood of popple pale as moonbeam,
Wood of oak for yoke and barn-beam,
Wood of hornbeam.

Silver bark of beech, and hollow
Stem of elder, tall and yellow
Twig of willow.

“The Trees in the Garden Rained Flowers” by Stephen Crane

The trees in the garden rained flowers.
Children ran there joyously.
They gathered the flowers
Each to himself.
Now there were some
Who gathered heaps—
Having opportunity and skill—
Until, behold, only chance blossoms
Remained for the feeble.
Then a little spindling tutor
Ran importantly to her father, crying:
“Pray, come hither!”
See this unjust thing in your garden!”
But when the father had surveyed,
He admonished the tutor:
“Not so, small sage!
This thing is just.
For look you,
Are not they who possess the flowers
Stronger, bolder, shrewder
Than they who have none?
Why should the strong—
The beautiful strong—
Why should not they have the flowers?”
Upon reflection, the tutor bowed to the ground,
“My lord,” he said,
“The stars are displaced
By this towering wisdom.”

“Summer” by John Clare

“The Orange Tree” by John Shaw Neilson

The young girl stood beside me.  I
Saw not what her young eyes could see:
– A light, she said, not of the sky
Lives somewhere in the Orange Tree.
– Is it, I said, of east or west?
The heartbeat of a luminous boy
Who with his faltering flute confessed
Only the edges of his joy?
Was he, I said, borne to the blue
In a mad escapade of Spring
Ere he could make a fond adieu
To his love in the blossoming?
– Listen! the young girl said.  There calls
No voice, no music beats on me;
But it is almost sound: it falls
This evening on the Orange Tree.
– Does he, I said, so fear the Spring
Ere the white sap too far can climb?
See in the full gold evening
All happenings of the olden time?
Is he so goaded by the green?
Does the compulsion of the dew
Make him unknowable but keen
Asking with beauty of the blue?
– Listen! the young girl said.  For all
Your hapless talk you fail to see
There is a light, a step, a call
This evening on the Orange Tree.
– Is it, I said, a waste of love
Imperishably old in pain,
Moving as an affrighted dove
Under the sunlight or the rain?
Is it a fluttering heart that gave
Too willingly and was reviled?
Is it the stammering at a grave,
The last word of a little child?
– Silence! the young girl said.  Oh, why,
Why will you talk to weary me?
Plague me no longer now,
for I  am listening like the Orange Tree

“The Tree” by Ezra Pound

I stood still and was a tree amid the wood,
Knowing the  truth of things unseen before;
Of Daphne and the laurel bow
And that god-feasting couple old
that grew elm-oak amid the wold.
‘Twas not until the gods had been
Kindly entreated, and been brought within
Unto the hearth of their heart’s home
That they might do this wonder thing;
Nathless I have been a tree amid the wood
And many a new thing understood
That was rank folly to my head before.

“Theme in Yellow” by Carl Sandburg 

I spot the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o’-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am fooling.