from
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836):
In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum
and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees
not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return
to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life,--no
disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair.
Standing on the bare ground,--my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted
into infinite space,--I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see
all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part
or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and
accidental. To be brothers, to be acquaintances,--master or servant, is
then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal
beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in
streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant
line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.
(Norton 1: 1075) To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own
beauty, and in the same field, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was
never seen before, and which shall never be seen again. The heavens change
every moment, and reflect their glory or gloom on the plains beneath. (Norton
1: 1078) |