Nature Quotes — page 159

Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts; and if people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the …

—for earth were too like heaven, If length of life to love were given.

Thou unassuming Common-place Of Nature, with that homely face, And yet with something of a grace, Which Love makes for thee!

Age cannot Love destroy, But perfidy can blast the flower, Even when in most unwary hour It blooms in Fancy's bower. Age cannot Love destroy, But perfidy can rend the shrine

In nature there is nothing melancholy.

The battle we have fought, and are still fighting, for the forests is a part of the eternal conflict between right and wrong, and we cannot expect to see the end of it. … So we must count on watching and striving for these trees, and …

Well may storm be on the sky, And the waters roll on high, When MANMADIN passes by. Earth below and heaven above Well may bend to thee, oh Love!

No bird, but an invisible thing, A voice, a mystery.

Sweet the rose which lives in Heaven, Although on earth ’tis planted, Where its honours blow, While by earth’s slaves the leaves are riven Which die the while they glow.

And what if all of animated nature Be but organic harps diversly fram'd, That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, At once the Soul of each, and God of All?

We all travel the milky way together, trees and men; but it never occurred to me until this storm-day, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not very extensive ones, it is …

Pillowed on a lotus flower, Gathered in a summer hour, Rides he o'er the mountain wave Which would be a tall ship's grave! At his back his bow is slung, Sugar-cane, with wild bees strung,—

O Blithe newcomer! I have heard, I hear thee and rejoice. O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird, Or but a wandering Voice?

You would not easily guess All the modes of distress Which torture the tenants of earth; And the various evils, Which like so many devils, Attend the poor souls from their birth.

It is generally supposed that complete pleasure of this kind, permeating one's very flesh and bones, unfits the student for scientific pursuits in which cool judgment and observation are required. But the effect is just the opposite. …

The loorie brought to his cinnamon nest. The bee from the midst of its honey quest, And open the leaves of the lotus lay To welcome the noon of the summer day.

Bright flower! whose home is everywhere Bold in maternal nature's care And all the long year through the heir Of joy or sorrow, Methinks that there abides in thee Some concord with humanity,

How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!

I do love violets: They tell the history of woman's love; They open with the earliest breath of spring; Lead a sweet life of perfume, dew, and light; And, if they perish, perish with a sigh Delicious as that life.

Of vast circumference and gloom profound, This solitary Tree! A living thing Produced too slowly ever to decay; Of form and aspect too magnificent To be destroyed.

Nature chose for a tool, not the earthquake or lightning to rend and split asunder, not the stormy torrent or eroding rain, but the tender snow-flowers noiselessly falling through unnumbered centuries, the offspring of the sun and sea.

It is a night of summer,—and the sea Sleeps, like a child, in mute tranquillity. Soft o'er the deep-blue wave the moonlight breaks; Gleaming, from out the white clouds of its zone,

There is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale, Which to this day stands single, in the midst Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore.

Those [forest] reserves are not merely for the convenience and benefit of the people near them, but they are the property of the nation and for its greatest good. It is unreasonable to suppose that they should be destroyed or imperiled for …