Nature’s Cavalcade

SPalmer-ValleyThickWithCorn

Samuel Palmer -The valley Thick With Corn

Nature’s  Cavalcade

When Hopkins gloried in dappled things
He must have thought of angels’ wings
Of gossamer and cuckoo spit
Of candles flicker-lit

As Palmer did
In silent chapels
In Kentish fields

 

Of darkening woods
where sunlight hides
In sheepland pastures
On downy hills
In buttercup meadows
Where linnet trills
The silent raptures
Of sunset light
On autumn trees
Where swoops the kite
And evening captures
The thickening shadows
The cooling breeze
Midst fields of golden rippling corn
That now adorn the rustic scene
Such glory in apple blossom seen
As they, with Blake,
Held in their hand
Those grains of sand
To wonder more
How Nature’s glory
Explains itself
In storm
And stillness
In calm and frenzy
Light and shade
In setting sun
And mounting moon
The evening’s glaze
In bounteous harvest
Nature’s cavalcade
bar-curl4

Samuel Palmer’s ‘Evening Church’

coming-from-evening-church-by-samuel-palmer-1830

Samuel Palmer’s Evening Church

 

In the summer evening’s stillness
under the calm
of the the sickle moon
Evensong is softly sung.
The gentle breeze
catching only the occasional sigh
On the evening’s air.
The hope of summer
rests in the gently rolling hills,
the golden sheaves of garnered corn
and the lushness of the blackberries
in the hedgerows.
With solemn seriousness
Nature sighs
and as the evening cools
the silence of the scene
is pierced occasionally
by God’s evening hymn.

 

bar1