Quotes About Nature

Down the mountain wallsFrom where Pan's cavern isIntolerable music falls.Foul goat-head, brutal arm appear,Belly, shoulder, bum,Flash fishlike; nymphs and satyrsCopulate in the foam.

That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.

Once out of nature I shall never takeMy bodily form from any natural thing,But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths makeOf hammered gold and gold enamelingTo keep a drowsy Emperor awake;Or set upon a golden bough to singTo lords and ladies of ByzantiumOf what is past, or passing, or to come.

The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

Under bare Ben Bulben's headIn Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.

The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves,The brilliant moon and all the milky sky,And all that famous harmony of leaves,Had blotted out man's image and his cry.

The woods of Arcady are dead,And over is their antique joy;Of old the world on dreaming fed;Gray Truth is now her painted toy.

I heard the old, old men say,"All that's beautiful drifts awayLike the waters."

Unwearied still, lover by lover,They paddle in the coldCompanionable streams or climb the air;Their hearts have not grown old.

Upon the brimming water among the stonesAre nine-and-fifty swans.

For such,Being made beautiful overmuch,Consider beauty a sufficient end,Lose natural kindness and maybeThe heart-revealing intimacyThat chooses right, and never find a friend.

All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,The heavy steps of the plowman, splashing the wintry mold,Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.

That is no country for old men. The youngIn one another's arms, birds in the trees—Those dying generations—at their song,The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer longWhatever is begotten, born, and dies.Caught in that sensual music all neglectMonuments of unaging intellect.

John Synge, I and Augusta Gregory, thoughtAll that we did, all that we said or sangMust come from contact with the soil, from thatContact everything Antaeus-like grew strong.

You shall go with me, newly-married bride,And gaze upon a merrier multitude.White-armed Nuala, Aengus of the Birds,Feachra of the hurtling form, and himWho is the ruler of the Western Host,Finvara, and their Land of Heart's Desire.Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood,But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.

Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun. - The Song of Wandering Aengus

Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet. She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree; But I, being young and foolish, with her did not agree. In a field by the river my love and I did stand, And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand. She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs; But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

I heard the old, old, men say 'all that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping...I hear it in the deep heart's core.

I believe when I am in the mood that all nature is full of people whom we cannot see, and that some of these are ugly or grotesque, and some wicked or foolish, but very many beautiful beyond any one we have ever seen, and that these are not far away....the simple of all times and the wise men of ancient times have seen them and even spoken to them.

I went out to the hazelwood because a fire was in my head.

A daughter of a King of Ireland, heard A voice singing on a May Eve like this, And followed half awake and half asleep, Until she came into the Land of Faery, Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue. And she is still there, busied with a dance Deep in the dewy shadow of a wood, Or where stars walk upon a mountain-top.

Is it not certain that the Creator yawns in earthquake and thunder and other popular displays, but toils in rounding the delicate spiral of a shell? -Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil