Seeking recommendation of poems and/or poets that focuses on nature

Do you want established favorites, such as Robert Frost, or something a bit obscure?

Any poem, any poet, any source. Include the established. Also include the new.

Introduction to Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807 - 1882

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of old, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it
Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman?
Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers,--
Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands,
Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven?
Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed!
Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October
Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o’er the ocean.
Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand-Pré.

Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient,
Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman’s devotion,
List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest;
List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy.

The poets of the Romantic movement (Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, Shelley) will provide you with many poems that focus on nature.

For example, Wordsworth wrote, "My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky." (That's the first line and title. I'm sure you can find it online.)

https://www.poemhunter.com/john-clare/<br />

All nature has a feeling: woods, fields, brooks
Are life eternal: and in silence they
Speak happiness beyond the reach of books;
There's nothing mortal in them; their decay
Is the green life of change; to pass away
And come again in blooms revivified.
Its birth was heaven, eternal it its stay,
And with the sun and moon shall still abide
Beneath their day and night and heaven wide.

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate,
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to me
The Century's corpse outleant,
Its crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind its death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervorless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead,
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited.
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
With blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew,
And I was unaware.

Thomas Hardy

I had to learn that word for word when I did my O levels.

I wonder if memorizing verse is still widely practiced in schools? My guess, at least in the USA, would be no.

Not over here either, I did my O levels a long time ago.

My favorite book of poetry:
Haiku: This Other World – by Richard Wright

The nuns made us memorize, or try to, but that was in the 1950's US.
I wonder if teachers still do, perhaps in some english major university classes, but that seems unlikely.

Another thought: are there poetry readings available in new handy devices for people taking long walks?

I think Gilbert Gottfried has released a tape.

Ah yes. I remember being assigned to memorize poems as punishment back then.

When you consider that for most of human history we had an oral culture where memorization was the only method we had of handing down knowledge and stories over the course of many generations...mind boggling. I believe there are pious Muslims who routinely memorize the Koran, and probably the same with other contemporary religions, but we're talking about prodigious memories, people able to recite the names of their ancestors going back scores of generations, people able to recite the long epic poems which recounted their history. So, when that skill is abandoned in favor of written records, what's been lost? And when written records are abandoned in favor of electronic storage and retrieval, what's been lost? In my case, penmanship has taken a real beating.

Try Loren Eiseley

https://able2know.org/topic/16748-1

I live in the US and yes, we had to memorize certain poems - we had a choice. My daughter who is in high school now also had to choose a poem and recite it in class. Those that did the best actually participated in a competition.

So yes it is widely practiced in US schools.

Also - Robert Frost has many poems with nature within it - Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening (one I didn't have to memorize but since others in the class did - by hearing it so much I have memorized pretty much remember most of it to this day).