"Spring" by Gerard Manly Hopkins

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         

   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;         

   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush         

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring         

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush         

   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush         

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         

What is all this juice and all this joy?         

   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning

In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,         

   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,         

Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,         

   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.         

Vulture by Robinson Jeffers

I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare hillside
Above the ocean. I saw through half-shut eyelids a vulture wheeling
       high up in heaven,
And presently it passed again, but lower and nearer, its orbit
       narrowing,
       I understood then
That I was under inspection. I lay death-still and heard the flight-
       feathers
Whistle above me and make their circle and come nearer.
I could see the naked red head between the great wings
Bear downward staring. I said, 'My dear bird, we are wasting time
       here.
These old bones will still work; they are not for you.' But how
       beautiful
       he looked, gliding down
On those great sails; how beautiful he looked, veering away in the
       sea-light
       over the precipice. I tell you solemnly
That I was sorry to have disappointed him. To be eaten by that beak
       and
       become part of him, to share those wings and those eyes--
What a sublime end of one's body, what an enskyment; what a life
       after death.