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Best Famous Naturalist Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Naturalist poems. This is a select list of the best famous Naturalist poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Naturalist poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of naturalist poems.

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Written by Seamus Heaney | Create an image from this poem

Death Of A Naturalist

 All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on window-sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.
 Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.


Written by Emma Lazarus | Create an image from this poem

Critic and Poet: an Epilogue

 No man had ever heard a nightingale, 
When once a keen-eyed naturalist was stirred 
To study and define--what is a bird, 
To classify by rote and book, nor fail 
To mark its structure and to note the scale 
Whereon its song might possibly be heard. 
Thus far, no farther;--so he spake the word. 
When of a sudden,--hark, the nightingale! 

Oh deeper, higher than he could divine 
That all-unearthly, untaught strain! He saw 
The plain, brown warbler, unabashed. "Not mine" 
(He cried) "the error of this fatal flaw. 
No bird is this, it soars beyond my line, 
Were it a bird, 'twould answer to my law."

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry