“Happiness, do not leave me.
I know you, a capricious monarch
perching on the fortunate flowers you see.
Hear me:
I am too attached to this royalty now.
Can I make you rest here somehow?
I will offer you the nectar of every flower in blossom,
the honey of every fruit in harvest.
I will make the Earth a garden,
the entire universe a forest.
I beg of you not to flutter by.
I beg of you not to leave me, butter-coloured fly.
Nest here
and for you,
I will create a home.”
―
I know you, a capricious monarch
perching on the fortunate flowers you see.
Hear me:
I am too attached to this royalty now.
Can I make you rest here somehow?
I will offer you the nectar of every flower in blossom,
the honey of every fruit in harvest.
I will make the Earth a garden,
the entire universe a forest.
I beg of you not to flutter by.
I beg of you not to leave me, butter-coloured fly.
Nest here
and for you,
I will create a home.”
―
“Outside is the only place we can truly be inside the world.”
― THIS SIDE OF A WILDERNESS: A Novel
― THIS SIDE OF A WILDERNESS: A Novel
“On a midsummer night, on a night that was eerie with stars,
In a wood too deep for a single star to look through,
You led down a path whose turnings you knew in the darkness,
But the scent of the dew-dripping cedars was all that I knew.
I drank of the darkness, I was fed with the honey of fragrance,
I was glad of my life, the drawing of breath was sweet;
I heard your voice, you said, 'Look down, see the glow-worm!'
It was there before me, a small star white at my feet.”
― The Collected Poems
In a wood too deep for a single star to look through,
You led down a path whose turnings you knew in the darkness,
But the scent of the dew-dripping cedars was all that I knew.
I drank of the darkness, I was fed with the honey of fragrance,
I was glad of my life, the drawing of breath was sweet;
I heard your voice, you said, 'Look down, see the glow-worm!'
It was there before me, a small star white at my feet.”
― The Collected Poems
“This fusion of wood and water is an entrancing thing. Without the wood the stream would be nothing: a mere thin watercourse winding through its flat meadows. Without the water the wood, on its slope and with its air of quietness and mystery and of being a world within itself, could not help being a constantly delightful thing. But water and wood, together, shading and watering and bounding each other, each give to the other something which the other does not possess, the wood giving to the stream something solid and shadowy and immemorial, the stream giving to the wood all the incomparable movement and twinkling transience of moving water, the tree shadows standing deep in the stream, the reflection of sunlight flickering a kind of waterlight up into the shadowy branches of pine and alder. The wood and the water are here, in fact, one, for each other and with each other. It is a fusion that is almost perfect.”
― Through the Woods
― Through the Woods
“If people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish.”
― John Muir Ultimate Collection: Travel Memoirs, Wilderness Essays, Environmental Studies & Letters (Illustrated): Picturesque California, The Treasures ... Redwoods, The Cruise of the Corwin and more
― John Muir Ultimate Collection: Travel Memoirs, Wilderness Essays, Environmental Studies & Letters (Illustrated): Picturesque California, The Treasures ... Redwoods, The Cruise of the Corwin and more
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— last activity Nov 21, 2011 01:23PM
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