It’s spring, according to the calendar, anyway, but whether you are basking in the first warmth of the season, or awaiting it, get into a springtime mood with nature poems.

Poets since the dawn of language have rhapsodized about their love of nature by writing it in verse. An appreciation of the world around us, the flora and the fauna, is one of the most enduring of the poetic themes. However, some poets have recognized that nature is something that must be experienced rather than read, and their poetry about this discomfiture make for the best nature poems.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) summed up his love of his surroundings in “To Nature:”

Coleridge acknowledges that the words he writes as a paean to the beauty that surrounds him are pale in comparison to the reality, but expects that God will understand his attempt.

However, Emily Dickinson realizes that any poetic attempt to capture nature’s bounties and beauties are doomed to failure in “”Nature” is what we see:”

Dickinson is at least 150 years ahead of her time, putting nature in quotation marks, delineating the irony between nature and the poetic perception of nature. Dickinson succinctly outlines the poets conundrum by saying “nature is what we know/yet have no art to say/so impotent is Our Wisdom is/To her Simplicity.” It’s a simplicity that is only confounded and compounded for being put to words.

Arthur Symons (1865-1945) writes of his own relation to the world around him in “Amends to Nature:”

By recognizing his own place in nature, Symons sees his own insignificance, and, as such, the insufficiency of words to describe nature.

They may not be the best way to experience nature, but nature poems do prompt a larger understanding of the experience. So while nature poems are nothing close to the reality of nature, they do complement nature.