5 Inspiring Nature Poems

Poetry helps us to understand and appreciate the world around us. Poetry plays such an important part in my nature therapy and expressive arts work.

Now I want to share my top five absolute favourite nature poems with you.

Mary Oliver Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

Emily Dickinson How Happy is…

How happy is the little stone

That rambles in the road alone

And doesn’t care about careers

And exigencies never fears;

Whose coat of elemental brown

A passing universe put on;

And independent as the sun

Associates or glows alone

Fulfilling absolute decree

In casual simplicity.

William Wordsworth, I wandered lonely as a cloud…

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high over vales and hills

When all at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils ;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle in the Milky Way,

They sheltered in never-ending time

Along the margin of the bay

10,000 saw I at a glance

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance

The waves beside them danced; but they out-did the sparkling waves in glee

A poet could not but be gay

In such a jocund company

I gazed - and gazed - but little thought what wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or pensive modd

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dancing with the daffodils.

Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods…

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Burns, Bonnie Bell

The smiling spring comes in rejoicing,

And surly winter grimly flies;

Now crystal clear are the falling waters,

And bonny blue are the sunny skies.

Fresh o'er the mountains breaks forth the morning,

The ev'ning gilds the Ocean's swell;

All Creatures joy in the sun's returning,

And I rejoice in my Bonie Bell.

The flowery Spring leads sunny Summer, The yellow Autumn presses near,

Then in his turn comes gloomy Winter, Till smiling Spring again appear.

Thus seasons dancing, life advancing, Old Time and Nature their changes tell;

But never ranging, still unchanging, I adore my Bonie Bell.

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What is your favourite nature poem? I would love to know!