|
Home Wood Chips Related Links Webrings Awards |
The Beauty and Fragrance of Plants
Flowers
Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes --
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.
The rose that lives its little hour
Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
A Scene on the Banks of the Hudson, 1828
If a man finds himself with bread in both hands, he should exchange one loaf for some flowers of narcissus, because the loaf feeds the body, but the flowers feed the soul.
Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers -- and never succeeding.
To see a world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wild flower; to hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour -- is inspiration.
Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into.
Life Thoughts, 1858
One of the most attractive things about the flowers is their beautiful reserve.
Journals, 1906
Keep not your roses for my dead, cold brow
The way is lonely, let me feel them now.
If I Should Die To-Night
Every flower is a soul blossoming in Nature.
Pensée Antique, 1845
Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it.
And the ripe harvest of the new-mown hay
Gives it a sweet and wholesome odour.
And April weeps -- but, O ye hours!
Follow with May's fairest flowers.
I am following Nature without being able to grasp her ... I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.
People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.
Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of the character, though few can decypher even fragments of their meaning.
Letters from New York, 1843
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Intimations of Immortality, 1807
Today as in the time of Pliny and Columella, the hyacinth flourishes in Wales, the periwinkle in Illyria, the daisy on the ruins of Numantia; while around them cities have changed their masters and their names, collided and smashed, disappeared into nothingness, their peaceful generations have crossed down the ages as fresh and smiling as on the days of battle.
Philosophy of Human History, 1825
Trees
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Indeed, unless the billboard fall,
I will never see a tree at all.
Song of the Open Road
in Happy Days, 1933
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.
Stopping by Woods On a Snowy Evening
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
Two Roads
He that planteth a tree is a servant of God, he provideth a kindness for many generations, and faces that he haith not seen shall bless him.
The groves were God's first temples.
A Forest Hymn, 1825
We have nothing to fear and a great deal to learn from trees, that vigorous and pacific tribe which without stint produces strengthening essences for us, soothing balms, and in whose gracious company we spend so many cool, silent and intimate hours.
Pleasures and Regrets, 1896
I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.
O Pioneers, 1913
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Walden Pond
I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known.
Walden Pond
Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?
The bud is on the bough again,
The leaf is on the tree.
The Meeting of Spring and Summer
The lofty oak from a small acorn grows.
De Minimus Maxima
All a green willow, willow,
All a green willow is my garland.
The Green Willow
One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the ages can.
The Tables Turned
Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?
Song of the Open Road, 1856
He who plants a tree, plants a hope.
Plant a Tree
Other Plants
A weed is no more than a flower in disguise.
The Growth of a Legend, 1847
What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.
Fortune of the Republic, 1878
