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This is the engines of

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our ingenuity, made possible by

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the friends of KUHF Houston.

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Today, we look closely at

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romantic nature. The University

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of Houston presents the series

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about the machines that make

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our civilization run and the

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people whose ingenuity created them.

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One of the best-known poems of

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British romanticism is owed to a

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skylark in 1820 work by Percy

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Bish Shelley Hail to thee Blythe

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spirit the poem begins as Shelley

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calls out to the songbird whose

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beautiful trill he loves to hear

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praising the skylark sound as a

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flood of rapture Shelley's admiration for

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the songbird shows both his love

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of nature and how nature inspires

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his own poetry Romantic

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poetry is often called nature poetry

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because so many of its best-known

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works are about nature. Words were

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rhapsodized about rainbus, daffodils, and

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mountain walks. Coleridge wrote about

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an aoleon harp, a kind of

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wind chime that makes music from

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the breeze. One of Keats' greatest

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poems owed to a nightingale is

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also about a songbird. Like Shelley

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hailing the skylick song, all these

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poets words help us appreciate nature.

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But in celebrating nature's beauty, the

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romantic poets also document a world

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in which nature was under threat.

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When these poets lived in the late

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18th and early 19th century, walls

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and property restrictions were enclosing the

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wide open fields that words were

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loved. Industrial refuse was clouding

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skies and polluting waters, and cities

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were bursting with people with little

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experience in nature's ideal. Romantic

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poetry, we start to understand,

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is nature poetry not just because

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poets were inspired by nature. By

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writing about nature, these poets'

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words substitute for the actual

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nature than rapidly disappearing. By

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contrast, the bird poems of self-tenths

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taught farmer poet John Claire offer

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a much more clear-eyed glimpse of

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the changing landscape. And like Shelley

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and his cohort, Claire was a

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tenant farmer with little formal

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education. Poor throughout his life, Claire made

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his own ink by boiling roots and leaves,

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but his daily labor in nature,

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and like the idealized visions of

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his more privileged counterparts, reveals Claire's

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acute sense of the natural world

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around him. Birds, why are you silent? asks

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Claire in his poem of the same name

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of the same name? Wondering why

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he doesn't hear any

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songbirds, Claire calls out

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to red-breast, hedge sparrow,

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chaffinch, bullfinch, yellow-hammers, blackbird,

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tree-creeper, feed sparrow, wren,

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robins, and larks. His

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long list of specific

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birds shows both his

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deep knowledge of nature

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and his fear that

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something is harming it.

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More than a century

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after John Claire, environmentalist

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Rachel Carson borrowed from the

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romantic poets for the title of

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her important 1962 book, Silent Spring.

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A study about the ecological

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damage wrought by pesticides, Silent

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Spring also uses the absence

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of birdsong to urge environmental

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protections. Now, decades later, as continuing

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ecological destruction causes bird populations

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to decline at alarming rates,

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romantic poetry still reminds us

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of the priceless gift of

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nature. Great writing doesn't just

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help us see nature better.

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The best writing also reminds

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us to listen, and then

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listening withhold a responsibility

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to nature. I'm Karen Fang at

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the University of Houston, where we're

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interested in the way inventive minds work.