There’s a world of wonder all around us every day. From the biggest clouds in the sky to the tiniest dew drops, poets have been inspired by nature throughout the ages. In the hustle and bustle of our daily lives, it’s easy to take our surroundings for granted. Here are some poems about nature to encourage us to stop and appreciate the beauty around us.
Quick reminder: Poetry is about self-expression, so please review the poems about nature before sharing them with students to ensure that the authors’ work matches the tone of your classroom.
Our Favorite Poems About Nature
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth
“That floats on high o’er vales and hills …”
Wild Pansy by Lisa Bellamy
“As a seed, I was shot out the back end of a blue jay …”
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
“Whose woods these are I think I know.”
Putting in the Seed by Robert Frost
“You come to fetch me from my work to-night …”
What I Would Like To Grow in My Garden by Katherine Riegel
“Peonies, heavy and pink as ’80s bridesmaid dresses …”
My November Guest by Robert Frost
“My Sorrow, when she’s here with me …”
Summer Haibun by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
“To everything, there is a season of parrots …”
The Tyger by William Blake
“Tyger! Tyger! burning bright …”
Hermitage by Joseph Fasano
“It’s true there were times when it was too much …”
A Bird Came Down the Walk by Emily Dickinson
“He did not know I saw …”
Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost
“Nature’s first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold.”
The Fire by Katie Ford
“When a human is asked about a particular fire, she comes close …”
The Seed-Shop by Muriel Stuart
“Here in a quiet and dusty room they lie, faded as crumbled stone and shifting sand …”
To the Cardinal, Attacking His Reflection in the Window by Leah Naomi Green
“‘It is your very self’ I tell him …”
A Light Exists in Spring by Emily Dickinson
“Not present on the Year, at any other period …”
Hummingbird by Robin Becker
“I love the whir of the creature come …”
The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop
“I caught a tremendous fish, and held him beside the boat …”
Mercy Beach by Kamilah Aisha Moon
“Stony trails of jagged beauty rise …”
It’s September by Edgar A. Guest
“It’s September, and the orchards are afire with red and gold …”
A Sunset by Ari Banias
“I watch a woman take a photo, of a flowering tree with her phone …”
Our Blessings by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
“Sitting to-day in the sunshine, that touched me with fingers of love …”
Nature Aria by Yi Lei translated by Tracy K. Smith and Changtai Bi
“Autumn wind chases in, from all directions …”
Sea Fever by John Masefield
“I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky …”
The Gray Heron by Galway Kinnell
“It held its head still …”
The Brook by Alfred Tennyson
“I come from haunts of coot and hern …”
Marriage by Nicole Callihan
“& of the lattermath I can only say, that with the rain the cattails grew so high …”
Music by Bessie Rayner Parkes
“Sweet melody amidst the moving spheres …”
There Is Another Sky by Emily Dickinson
“Ever serene and fair …”
Merry Autumn by Paul Laurence Dunbar
“It’s all a farce—these tales they tell, about the breezes sighing …”
The Glory of the Garden by Rudyard Kipling
“Our England is a garden that is full of stately views …”
No Songs in Winter by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
“The sky is gray as gray may be …”
Shook Foil by Kwame Dawes
“The whole earth is filled with the love of God.”
February Twilight by Sara Teasdale
“I stood beside a hill, smooth with new-laid snow …”
Winter Morning Poem by Ogden Nash
“Winter is the king of showmen …”
How the Milky Way Was Made by Natalie Diaz
“My river was once unseparated. Was Colorado. Red- fast flood.”
Birches by Robert Frost
“When I see birches bend to left and right …”
Peace by Bessie Rayner Parkes
“The steadfast coursing of the stars, the waves that ripple to the shore …”
mulberry fields by Lucille Clifton
“they thought the field was wasting …”
The Way Through the Woods by Rudyard Kipling
“They shut the road through the woods, seventy years ago.”
The Eagle by Alfred Tennyson
“He clasps the crag with crooked hands, close to the sun in lonely lands …”
300 Goats by Naomi Shihab Nye
“Will they huddle together, warm bodies pressing?”
To Autumn by John Keats
“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness …”
A Day of Sunshine by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“O gift of God! O perfect day, whereon shall no man work, but play …”
The Praying Tree by Melinda Palacio
“Ten years of driving the same highway, past the same tree, the picture is at last complete.”
A Minor Bird by Robert Frost
“I have wished a bird would fly away, and not sing by my house all day …”
The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats
“I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree …”
Spring by Edna St. Vincent Millay
“To what purpose, April, do you return again?”
In the Clearing by Patricia Hooper
“After last night’s rain the woods …”
Pray to What Earth by Henry David Thoreau
“Pray to what earth does this sweet cold belong …”
Desert Places by Robert Frost
“Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast …”
A Winter Blue Jay by Sara Teasdale
“Crisply the bright snow whispered, crunching beneath our feet …”
A Narrow Fellow in the Grass by Emily Dickinson
“Occasionally rides; you may have met him, —did you not …”
Vision by Jessie B. Rittenhouse
“I came to the mountains for beauty …”
The World by Jennifer Chang
“One winter I lived north, alone …”
Who Has Seen the Wind? by Christina Rossetti
“Neither I nor you …”
At the Window by D.H. Lawrence
“The pine-trees bend to listen to the autumn wind as it mutters …”
Allie by Robert Graves
“Allie, call the birds in, the birds from the sky.”
The Humblebee by Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Burly dozing humblebee! Where thou art is clime for me.”
Sonnet by Wallace Stevens
“Lo, even as I passed beside the booth …”
Memory by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
“My mind lets go a thousand things, like dates of wars and deaths of kings …”
To make a prairie by Emily Dickinson
“To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.”
The Arid Land by Lynn Riggs
“There will be willows plunging, their bloodless roots in the air …”
maggie and milly and molly and may by E. E. Cummings
“went down to the beach (to play one day) …”
[I wandered lonely as a Cloud] by William Wordsworth
“That floats on high o’er Vales and Hills …”
[The cry of the cicada] by Matsuo Bashō
“The cry of the cicada
Gives us no sign
That presently it will die.”
Remember by Joy Harjo
“Remember the sky that you were born under, know each of the star’s stories.”
Trees by Joyce Kilmer
“I think that I shall never see, a poem lovely as a tree.”
Song of Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Mine are the night and morning …”
Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan, a stately pleasure dome decree …”
My Heart Leaps Up by William Wordsworth
Loveliest of Trees by A.E. Housman
“Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough …”
Wasteland: on the California Wildfires by Forrest Gander
“Green spring grass on the hills had cured by June and by July …”
The Bonfire by Robert Frost
“Oh, let’s go up the hill and scare ourselves …”
Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley
“O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being …”
Gills by Rain Prud’homme-Cranford
“I convince myself I can breathe underwater.”
Sand Paintings by Catharine Savage Brosman
“The grains propose the spectrum of the landscape …”
Stars in Alabama by Jessie Redmon Fauset
“Stars hang down so low …”
The Lost Breath of Trees by Colleen J. McElroy
“In the days before urban sprawl this town remained no more than cow pastures …”
To a Snowflake by Francis Thompson
“What heart could have thought you?”
Somewhere Everywhere by Margo Berdeshevsky
“And the fireflies cried.”