We of the Earth, are Earthly,
And we speaketh of the Earth—²
We yearn to live as nature lives: Surrendering all!³
We know the Secret of the making of the
Best persons: it is to grow in the open air
And to eat and sleep with the Earth.⁴
To one who in the Love of Nature
Holds Communion with her visible
Forms, she speaks a various language.⁵
Full many a glorious morning have we seen
Flatter mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kiss with golden face the meadows green,
Gild pale streams with Heavenly Alchemy.⁶
All arts lose virtue against the essential Reality
Of creatures going about their business among
The equally earnest elements of Nature.⁷
Inebriate of Air am I—
And debauchee of Dew—⁸
The Inner, what is it?
Sky intensified, hurled through
With bird and deep from
The winds of Homecoming …⁹
We are the thousand Winds that blow,
We are the diamond glints on Snow,
We are the Sun on ripened grain,
We are the gentle autumn Rain.¹⁰
¹ Omar Khayyám tr. Edward Fitzgerald, Rubáiyát
² John 3:31 (King James)
³ Bell Hooks, Appalachian Elegy 43
⁴ Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road
⁵ William Cullen Bryant, Thanatopsis
⁶ William Shakespeare, Sonnet XXXIII
⁷ Robinson Jeffers, Boats in a Fog
⁸ Emily Dickinson, I Taste a Liquor
⁹ Rainer Maria Rilke tr. original, Ah, Not To Be Cut Off
¹⁰ Clare Harner, Immortality