A Natural Progression

Poems about nature (including people)

It climbed and climbed from earth invisibly,
And kept its secret in the silent stem,
And turned in the clear blossoms into flame,
And then resumed its secrecy.

And through a whole long summer fructified
Within that day and night travailing tree,
And felt itself as urging instancy
To meet responding space outside.

And though it now displays so shiningly
That rondure of completed rest anew,
Within the rind it sinks resigningly
Back to the centre it outgrew.
                             ("The Fruit"
                              by Rainer Maria Rilke
                              Trans. J.B. Leishman)