Nature Quotes — page 156

Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn Lent it the music of its trees at dawn?

Dreams of the summer night! Tell her, her lover keeps Watch! while in slumbers light She sleeps.

Friday I tasted life. It was a vast morsel. A circus passed the house — still I feel the red in my mind though the drums are out. [...] The lawn is full of south and the odors tangle, and I hear to-day for the first the river in the tree.

Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea! Jehovah has triumphed—his people are free.

When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces, The mother of months in meadow or plain Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain; And the brown bright nightingale amorous Is half assuaged for Itylus,

I have just finished your little book on 'The Logic of Vegetarianism.' It is the best thing on this subject in existence – bold, brilliant, unanswerable. I am glad you are on earth. If it were not for a very few souls like you, this world …

When we study history we obtain a more profound insight into human nature by instituting a comparison between the present and former states of society.

For sure the enchanted waters pour through every wind that blows. I think when night towers up aloft and shakes the trembling dew How every high and lonely thought that thrills my being through Is but a ruddy berry dropped down through the …

In drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy tree, Thy branches ne'er remember Their green felicity.

The real drama of Evangelicalism—and it has abundance of fine drama for any one who has genius enough to discern and reproduce it—lies among the middle and lower classes; and are not Evangelical opinions understood to give an especial …

All Nature's wildness tells the same story: the shocks and outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, roaring, thundering waves and floods, the silent uprush of sap in plants, storms of every sort, each and all, are the orderly, …

Alas! that every lovely thing Lives only but for withering,— That spring rainbows and summer shine End but in autumn's pale decline.

Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart: Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness.

Art thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless Among the stars that have a different birth, — And ever changing, like a joyless eye That finds no object worth its constancy?

Be that blind bard who on the Chian strand, By those deep sounds possessed with inward light, Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.

In how many churches, by how many prophets, tell me, is man made sensible that he is an infinite Soul; that the earth and heavens are passing into his mind; that he is drinking forever the soul of God?

I find earth not gray but rosy; Heaven not grim but fair of hue. Do I stoop? I pluck a posy; Do I stand and stare? All's blue.

Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.

As the liberty lads o'er the sea Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood, So we, boys, we Shall die fighting or live free, And down with all kings but King Ludd!

A God, a God their severance ruled! And bade betwixt their shores to be The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea.

Stars of the summer night! Far in yon azure deeps, Hide, hide your golden light! She sleeps! My lady sleeps!

Many of Nature's finest lessons are to be found in her storms, and if careful to keep in right relations with them, we may go safely abroad with them, rejoicing in the grandeur and beauty of their works and ways.

'Tis not for Spring to think on all The sear and waste of Autumn's fall: —

Thou has left behind Powers that will work for thee,—air, earth, and skies! There 's not a breathing of the common wind That will forget thee; thou hast great allies; Thy friends are exultations, agonies, And love, and man's unconquerable …