Echoes

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, / A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou / Beside me singing in the Wilderness — / Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

The Master, standing by a stream, said: "It passes on just like this, not ceasing day or night."

Ah! Sun-flower, weary of time, / Who countest the steps of the Sun, / Seeking after that sweet golden clime / Where the traveller's journey is done.

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night / Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight: / And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught / The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by. Now overlap the sundials with your shadows, and on the meadows let the wind go free. Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine; grant them a few more warm transparent days, urge them on to fulfillment then, and press the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling, give me juicy autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard, give me a field where the unmowed grass grows, give me an arbor, give me the trellis'd grape.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don't go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don't go back to sleep.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, / But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep.

Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.

Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time.

The sun and distant stars appeared to mingle in the perfection of the same natural order, and I felt, in the stillness of the tropical night, how much more alive and near to the heavens was this part of the earth.

Take rest; a field that has rested yields a bountiful crop.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, / Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; / Conspiring with him how to load and bless / With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run.

I go among trees and sit still. All my stirring becomes quiet around me like circles on water.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, there is a rapture on the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not Man the less, but Nature more.

My life is like a stroll upon the beach, As near the ocean's edge as I can go.

In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, — he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight.

I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o'er vales and hills, when all at once I saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils.

Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.

Our fantastic civilization has fallen out of touch with many aspects of nature, and with none more completely than with night. With lights and ever more lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea; the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it. Do they fear that vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars? Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of night?

In spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful. As the light creeps over the hills, their outlines are dyed a faint red and wisps of purplish cloud trail over them.

The green mountains are always walking. If you doubt mountains' walking, you do not know your own walking.

I was utterly alone with the sun and the earth. Lying down on the grass, I spoke in my soul to the earth, the sun, the air, and the distant sea far beyond sight. I thought of the earth's firmness — I felt it bear me up; through the grassy couch there came an influence as if I could feel the great earth speaking to me.

Empty mountain — no one in sight, / yet voices of men are heard. / Sun's reflected light enters the deep wood, / shining once more upon green moss.

When despair for the world grows in me I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.