Nature Quotes — page 158

How many hearts with warm red blood in them are beating under cover of the woods, and how many teeth and eyes are shining! A multitude of animal people, intimately related to us, but of whose lives we know almost nothing, are as busy about …

It is a gem which hath the power to show If plighted lovers keep their faith or no : If faithful, it is like the leaves of spring ; If faithless, like those leaves when withering.

The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

The sunlight clasps the earth, And the moonbeams kiss the sea: What are all these kissings worth If thou kiss not me?

Forth from his dark and lonely hiding place (Portentous-sight!) the owlet Atheism, Sailing an obscene wings athwart the noon, Drops his blue-fringèd lids, and holds them close, And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven, Cries out, "Where …

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance.

Kiss me as if you made believe You were not sure, this eve, How my face, your flower, had pursed It's petals up.

None of Nature's landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild.

But this is as a dream, — the plough has pass'd Where the stag bounded, and the day has looked On the green twilight of the forest-trees. This Oak has no companion ! - - - -

She hath smiles to earth unknown— Smiles that with motion of their own Do spread, and sink, and rise.

Sun-girt City, thou hast been Ocean's child, and then his queen; Now is come a darker day, And thou soon must be his prey.

Sea, and hill, and wood, With all the numberless goings-on of life, Inaudible as dreams!

I trust a good deal to common fame, as we all must. If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to …

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber …

Violets! — deep-blue violets! April's loveliest coronets! There are no flowers grow in the vale, Kiss'd by the dew, wooed by the gale, — None by the dew of the twilight wet, So sweet as the deep-blue violet!

Dear Child of Nature, let them rail!

Yet now despair itself is mild, Even as the winds and waters are; I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne and yet must bear, Till death like sleep might steal on me,

Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare, And shot my being through earth, sea, and air, Possessing all things with intensest love, O Liberty! my spirit felt thee there.

There are two classes of poets — the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love.

God never made an ugly landscape. All that the sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild.

Oh, fame is as the moon above, Whose sun of light and life is love. There is more in the smile of one gentle eye Then the thousand pages of history; Than the loudest plaudits the crowd can raise. Take the gems in glory's coronal,

The light that never was, on sea or land, The consecration, and the poet's dream.

I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect we trample are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be adduced that some vast intellect animates Infinity.

Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky! Yea! every thing that is and will be free! Bear witness for me, whereso'er ye be, With what deep worship I have still adored The spirit of divinest Liberty.