Nature Quotes — page 154

Let us bring the question to the test of experience and fact; and ask ourselves, considering our nature in its entire extent, what light we derive from a sustained and comprehensive view of its component parts, which may enable us to …

The river Rhine, it is well known, Doth wash your city of Cologne; But tell me, Nymphs, what power divine Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?

Whosoever hereafter shall name my name, shall not record a malefactor, but a benefactor in the earth.

The year's at the spring, And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hill-side's dew-pearl'd; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn;

And draw them all along, and flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever.

Whose game was empires and whose stakes were thrones, Whose table earth, whose dice were human bones.

Nature, with equal mind, Sees all her sons at play Sees man control the wind, The wind sweep man away.

I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where.

A little Madness in the Spring Is wholesome even for the King.

No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets, But as truly loves on to the close, As the sun-flower turns on her god when he sets The same look which she turn'd when he rose.

And soft as lips that laugh and hide The laughing leaves of the tree divide, And screen from seeing and leave in sight The god pursuing, the maiden hid.

Religion has had a natural origin, like coal, and rock salt, and mountains, and river valleys, and everything else. It has been made in the laboratory of human feeling and imagination. The gods did not make men; men made the gods.

We learn particularly from the Timaeus of Plato, that the Egyptians believed the world to be subject to occasional conflagrations and deluges, whereby the gods arrested the career of human wickedness, and purified the earth from guilt. …

Its edges foamed with amethyst and rose, Withers once more the old blue flower of day: There where the ether like a diamond glows Its petals fade away.

Bright star! would I were stedfast as thou art — Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round …

Blessed influence of one true, loving human soul on another. Not calculable by algebra, not deducible by logic, but mysterious, effectual, mighty as the hidden process by which the tiny seed is quickened, and bursts forth into tall stem …

The lyric lark, and the grave whispering dove, The sparrow that neglects his life for love, The household bird with the red stomacher.

Wert thou more fickle than the restless sea, Still should I love thee, knowing thee for such.

Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.

Awakening hope has named the name Of love, or blown its spark to flame. Restlessness, but as the winds range From leaf to leaf, from flower to flower; Changefulness, but as rainbows change, From colour'd sky to sunlit hour.

Love had he found in huts where poor men lie; His daily teachers had been woods and rills, The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills.

Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights The fairest feelings of the opening heart, Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love, And judgment cease to wage unnatural war With passion's …

Summer has set in with its usual severity.