The Poetry of Nature

"The sixty Nature poems which I have chosen are full of various music. They utter the changing thoughts and feelings which are awakened in the heart of man by the procession of the seasons, the alternations of day and night, the balancing of the clouds and the journeying of the winds, the vision of the sea and the stars, the silent blossoming and fading of the flowers, the fleeting masonry of the snow, the flight and the return of our little brothers in the air. In all this wondrous pageant that passes before us we dimly perceive a meaning that corresponds to something within us..." Henry van Dyke (1852--1933) was an American clergyman, educator, and author. He graduated from Princeton in 1873, and from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1874. He was pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church, New York City (1883--99), professor of English literature at Princeton (1899--1923), and U.S. minister to the Netherlands (1913--16). Among his popular inspirational writings is the Christmas story The Other Wise Man (1896). As President Wilson's ambassador to the Netherlands from 1913, Van Dyke was a first-hand witness to the outbreak of World War I and its progress, and was a key player in the President's diplomatic efforts to keep the U.S. out of the conflict.