CQ Home Search Indexes E-books Daily Ezines Bemorecreative

Nature is the living, visible garment of God, (1)

and earth, with her thousand voices, praises God. (2)

Flowers are the poetry of earth,

as stars are the poetry of heaven, (3)

and a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars. (4)

Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in Nature -

daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it -

rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks. The solid earth! (5)

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,

whose body Nature is, and God the soul. (6)

(1) J. W. von Goethe (2) Samuel Coleridge (3)Unknown (4) Walt Whitman (5)  Henry David Thoreau (6) Alexander Pope 

Like a great poet, Nature knows how to produce

the greatest effects with the most limited means. (7)

Nature is what we know - yet have not art to say -

so impotent our wisdom is to her simplicity. (8)

In fact, monotony is the law of Nature.

Look at the monotonous manner in which the sun rises! (9)

And if ignorant man marvels at the exceptional;

the wise man marvels at the common;

and the greatest wonder of all is the regularity of Nature. (10)

Yes, the poetry of earth is never dead . . .

the poetry of earth is ceasing never. (11)

(7) Heinrich Heine (8) Emily Dickinson (9) Mahatma Gandhi (10) George Dana Boardman (11) John Keats

---

So come forth into the light of things,

let Nature be your teacher. (12)

Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee. (13)

Nature will bear the closest inspection.

She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf,

and take an insect view of its plain. (14)

Touch the earth, love the earth, honour the earth,

her plains, her valleys, and her seas;

rest your spirit in her solitary places. (15)

God, I can push the grass apart,

and lay my finger on Thy heart! (16)

(12) William Wordsworth (13) Job 12:8 (14) Henry David Thoreau (15) Henry Beston (16) Edna St. Vincent Millay 

---

Let us permit Nature to have her way;

she understands her business better than we do. (17)

Accuse not Nature, she hath done her part;

Do thou but thine! (18)

You can't be suspicious of a tree,

or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion,

or challenge the ideology of a violet. (19)

Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome,

seldom extinguished. (20)

One generation passeth away,

and another generation cometh;

but the earth abideth for ever. (21)

So live in each season as it passes; breathe the air,

drink the drink, taste the fruit,

and resign yourself to the influences of each, (22)

as one touch of Nature makes the whole world kin. (23)

(17) Michel de Montaigne (18) John Milton (19) Hal Borland (20) Francis Bacon

(21) Ecclesiates 1:4 (22) Henry David Thoreau (23) William Shakespeare