Quotations

“One main object of the present enquiry is to show that the poetic interpretation of Nature did not begin in the eighteenth century.”

Resisting the idea that earlier poets used landscape only as scenery · Essay, The Interpretation of Nature in English Poetry

Frederic William Moorman

“Our English poets, from Old English times onwards, have lived nearer to Nature than those of any other nation of modern Europe.”

English verse as a long companionship with the outer world · Essay, The Interpretation of Nature in English Poetry

Frederic William Moorman

“Better to know of your own knowledge the color, the perfume, the nature, the twining, of a single little creeping vine in the canon than to know all the rocky mountains through a book.”

Values one thing truly seen over a landscape merely read about · Notes from The Hights

Joaquin Miller

“To me the savage of the plains or the negro of the South is a truer poet than the scholar of Oxford.”

Sets lived feeling above academic polish · Essay, The Independent, June 1879

Joaquin Miller

“This book, the book of Nature, I studied in the wilderness like a monk for many years.”

Claims the wild as his real school · Essay, The Independent, June 1879

Joaquin Miller

“The art of poetry is found in books; the inspiration of poetry is found only in Nature.”

Separates technique learned from print from vision learned outdoors · Essay, The Independent, June 1879

Joaquin Miller

“No man of sense ever supposes that copying from nature is the art of painting; if the art is no more than this, it is no better than any other manual labour.”

Art is invention of mind, not a trade of likeness · Public Address, notebook, c. 1810

William Blake

“The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. The lust of the goat is the bounty of God. The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.”

Energies branded sinful are recast as divine abundance · Proverbs of Hell, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

William Blake

“A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.”

The object is shared; the seeing is not · Proverbs of Hell, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

William Blake

“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the Eyes of others only a Green thing that stands in the way.”

Nature is never merely botanical to the imaginative eye · Letter to the Rev. Dr John Trusler, 23 August 1799

William Blake

“I am very well and happy — each time, as for instance yesterday, that I see the turmoil and soot of London, I rejoice to be living in the country. I am a perfect fool for love of it.”

Written months before her death, after she had settled to work in the English countryside · Letter from Henley-on-Thames, 25 September 1928, quoted by William Rose Benét

Elinor Wylie

“These poems form some slight memorial of an intimacy with Nature which War has destroyed since I now see Nature as the Great Indifferent.”

Records how combat altered his earlier communion with the natural world · Prefatory note, The Budded Branch, April 1918

Robert Nichols

“I am just finishing my Faun's Holiday. I wish you were here to feed him with cherries.”

A pastoral flourish written while Graves was still at the Somme, later answered in verse · Letter to Robert Graves, early 1917

Robert Nichols

“God gives Nature new garments every season. We are a part of Nature.”

Drawing a connection between natural renewal and human renewal · Essay, Old Clothes

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

“There are natures born to happiness just as there are born musicians, mechanics and mathematicians.”

Comparing happiness with an innate temperament or aptitude · Essay, The Philosophy of Happiness

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

“Fill the lungs full—every cell—with fresh air, two or three times daily, and do not overload the digestive organs, and sickness will fly away to the dark regions where it belongs.”

A colourful example of her New Thought-era beliefs about health · Essay, The Breath

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

“How much better to expatiate in its presence on the blessing of rain, and to teach it the enjoyment of all nature's varying moods.”

Encouraging children to appreciate nature rather than complain about inconvenience · Essay, The Philosophy of Happiness

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

“The tree trusts, and grows, and takes storm and sun as divinely sent, and believes in its right to new apparel, and it comes.”

Using nature to illustrate trust, resilience and renewal · Essay, The Heart of the New Thought

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

“The happiest and freest man is the scientist investigating nature.”

Valuing attention turned outward over self-absorption · Essay, Themes in My Poems, 1941

Robinson Jeffers

“It belongs out-doors, it has tides as nature has.”

Describing poetry as wild and natural rather than domestic · Preface, June 1922

Robinson Jeffers

“Three months spent among the most beautiful scenes of nature were a great lesson for me. I saw the harmony that unites everything and bathes it in one colour.”

Original: Trzy miesiące przepędzone pośród najpiękniejszych widoków przyrodzenia były wielką dla mnie nauką. Uważałem harmoniją, która wszystko łączy i nalewa jednym kolorem. — Nature leads him towards an artistic ideal of unity and harmony. · Letter to his mother, 20 October 1835 (Polish)

Juliusz Słowacki