Richard Wilbur’s poem, “Praise in Summer” from The Beautiful Changes and Other Poems, 1947 begins with a series of re-readings of nature. Thus, moles do not merely dig holes but they “fly overhead the dead”. Ranging through the things before him, he asks why “this mad instead”. Why are we not content with the wonder of the world as made.

Such forcing one-thing into another “Perverts our praise to uncreation”.

Poetry at its greatest does not unmake the world, but causes us to see the world as wonderfully as it actually is.

But Wilbur is actually doing something else here. He is bringing a Christian understanding to the art.  The Christian must see creation as very good –fallen, sadly — but that is only a temporary condition. The eternal, the permanent is the restoration of all things. Uncreation/de-creation is the mark of judgment and sin.

Thus, in viewing the creation with joy and clarity one brings praise for the Creator:

Does sense so stale that it must needs derange

The world to know it? To a praiseful eye

Should it not be enough of fresh and strange 

That trees grow green, and moles course in clay

And sparrows sweep the ceiling of our day?