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PART II

Nature's Voices

Think me not unkind or rude,

That I walk alone in grove and glen ; I go to the god of the wood

To fetch his word to men.

Tax not my sloth that I

Fold my arms beside the brook;
Each cloud that floated in the sky
Writes a letter in my book.

Chide me not, laborious band,
For the idle flowers I brought;
Every aster in my hand

Goes home loaded with a thought.

There was never mystery

But 't is figured in the flowers;

Was never secret history

But birds tell it in the bowers.

One harvest from thy field

Homeward brought the oxen strong; A second crop thy acres yield,

Which I gather in a song.

PART II

NATURE'S VOICES

THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US
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!
This sea that bares her bosom to the moon ;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be
pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

A

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

INVOCATION TO NATURE

EARTH, ocean, air, beloved brotherhood!
If our great mother have imbued my soul
With aught of natural piety to feel

Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;
If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even,
With sunset and its gorgeous ministers,
And solemn midnight's tingling silentness;
If Autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood,
And Winter robing with pure snow and crowns
Of starry ice the gray grass and bare boughs;
If Spring's voluptuous pantings, when she breathes
Her first sweet kisses, have been dear to me;
If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast
I consciously have injured, but still loved
And cherished these my kindred ; then forgive
This boast, beloved brethren, and withdraw
No portion of your wonted favor now!

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (Alastor).

FREEDOM OF NATURE

I CARE not, Fortune, what you me deny :
You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace;
You cannot shut the windows of the sky,
Through which Aurora shows her brightening face;
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve :
Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace,
And I their toys to the great children leave :
Of fancy, reason, virtue, naught can me bereave.
JAMES THOMSON (Castle of Indolence).

NATURE'S DELIGHTS

O MAKER of sweet poets! dear delight

Of this fair world and all its gentle livers;
Spangler of clouds, halo of crystal rivers,

Mingler with leaves, and dew, and tumbling streams;
Closer of lovely eyes to lovely dreams ;
Lover of loneliness and wandering,
Of upcast eye and tender pondering!
Thee must I praise above all other glories
That smile on us to tell delightful stories;
For what has made the sage or poet write,
But the fair paradise of Nature's light?
In the calm grandeur of a sober line
We see the waving of the mountain pine;
And when a tale is beautifully staid,
We feel the safety of a hawthorn glade;
When it is moving on luxurious wings,
The soul is lost in pleasant smotherings;
Fair dewy roses brush against our faces,

And flowering laurels spring from diamond vases;
O'erhead we see the jasmine and sweet-brier,
And bloomy grapes laughing from green attire ;
While at our feet the voice of crystal bubbles
Charms us at once away from all our troubles;
So that we feel uplifted from the world,

Walking upon the white clouds wreathed and curled.
JOHN KEATS (Nature and the Poets).

IMAGINATIVE SYMPATHY WITH NATURE

SKY, mountains, river, winds, lake, lightnings! ye,
With night, and clouds, and thunder, and a soul
To make these felt and feeling, well may be
Things that have made me watchful; the far roll

Of your departing voices is the knoll

Of what in me is sleepless

if I rest.

But where of ye, O tempests! is the goal?
Are ye like those within the human breast?

Or do ye find at length, like eagles, some high nest?
LORD BYRON (Childe Harold).

VARYING IMPRESSIONS FROM NATURE
I CANNOT paint

What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colors and their forms, were then to me
An appetite, a feeling and a love,

That had no heed of a remoter charm
By thoughts supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye. - That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed: for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on Nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,

Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man :
A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods

And mountains, and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear-both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In Nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (Tintern Abbey).

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