NATURE NATURE
Some touch of Nature's genial glow.
Oh, Brignall banks are wild and fair,
And Greta woods are green,
And you may gather garlands there
Would grace a summer queen.
In Nature's infinite book of secrecy
A little I can read.
Antony and Cleopatra. Act I. Sc. 2. L. 9.
How hard it is to hide the sparks of Nature!
Cymbeline. Act III. Sc. 3. L. 79.
To hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to Nature;
to shew virtue her own feature, scorn her own
image, and the very age and body of the time
his form and pressure.
Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 24.
Diseased Nature oftentimes breaks forth
In strange eruptions.
. Henry IV. Pt. I. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 27.
And Nature does require
Her times of preservation, which perforce
I, her frail son, amongst my brethren mortal,
Must give my tendance to.
Henry VIII. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 147.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
Troilus and Cressida. Act III. Sc. 3. L. 175.
How sometimes Nature will betray its folly,
Its tenderness, and make itself a pastime
To harder bosoms!
Winter's Tale. Act I. Sc. 2. L. 151.
Yet nature is made better by no mean
But nature makes that mean: so, over that art
Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes.
Winter's Tale. Act IV. Sc.4. L. 89.
My banks they are furnish'd with bees,
Whose murmur invites one to sleep;
My grottoes are shaded with trees,
And my hills are white over with sheep.
Shenstone—A Pastoral Ballad. Pt. II. Hope.
Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible.
R. B. Sheridan—The Critic. Act II. Sc. 1.
Yet neither spinnes, nor cards, ne cares nor fretts,
But to her mother Nature all her care she letts.
Spenser—Faerie Queene. Bk. II. Canto VI.
For all that Nature by her mother-wit
Could frame in earth.
Spenser—Faerie Queene. Bk. IV. Canto X.
St. 21.
What more felicitie can fall to creature
Than to enjoy delight with libertie,
And to be lord of all the workes of Nature,
To raine in th' aire from earth to highest skie,
To feed on flowres and weeds of glorious feature.
Spenser—The Fate of the Butterfly. L. 209.
Once, when the days were ages,
And the old Earth was young,
The high gods and the sages
From Nature's golden pages
Her open secrets wrung.
R. H. Stoddard—Brahma's Answer.
A voice of greeting from the wind was sent;
The mists enfolded me with soft white arms;
The birds did sing to lap me in content,
The rivers wove their charms,—
And every little daisy in the grass
Did look up in my face, and smile to see me pass!
R. H. Stoddard—Hymn to the Beautiful. St.
4.
In the world's audience hall, the simple blade
of grass sits on the same carpet with the sunbeams, and the stars of midnight.
Rabindranath Tagore—Gardener. 74.
Nothing in Nature is unbeautiful.
| author = Tennyson
| work = Lover's Tale. L. 348.
Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
| author = Tennyson
| work = Princess. Canto VII. L. 205.
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.
Thomson—Castle of Indolence. Canto II. St.
3.
O nature! * * *
Enrich me with the knowledge of thy works;
Snatch me to Heaven.
Thomson—Seasons. Autumn. L. 1,352.
Rocks rich in gems, and Mountains big with
mines,
That on the high Equator, ridgy, rise,
Whence many a bursting Stream auriferous plays.
Thomson—Seasons. Summer. L. 646.
Nature is always wise in every part.
Lord Thurlow—Select Poems. The Harvest
Moon.
Talk not of temples, there is one
Built without hands, to mankind given;
Its lamps are the meridian sun
And all the stars of heaven,
Its walls are the cerulean sky,
Its floor the earth so green and fair,
The dome its vast immensity
All Nature worships there!
David Vedder—Temple of Nature.
