Opening eyes to nature’s beauty by John Muir

Fresh beauty opens one’s eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps prevents its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing, therefore, to make short excursions now and then to the bottom of the sea among dulse and coral, or up among the clouds on mountain-tops, or in balloons, or even to creep like worms into dark holes and caverns underground, not only to learn something of what is going on in those out-of-the-way places, but to see better what the sun sees on our return to common everyday beauty.
John Muir

Inner Child :understand how to be small at times by Friedrich Nietzsche

We must remain as close to the flowers, the grass, and the butterflies as the child is who is not yet so much taller than they are. We adults, on the other hand, have outgrown them and have to lower ourselves to stoop down to them. It seems to me that the grass hates us when we confess our love for it. Whoever would partake of all good things must understand how to be small at times.
Friedrich Nietzsche

A Walk in Nature

Footpaths give a private, human touch to the landscape that roads do not. They are sacred to the human foot. They have the sentiment of domesticity, and suggest the way to cottage doors and to simple, primitive times.

It is not merely by virtue of the sunlight that falls now, and the rain and dew which it brings, that we continue here, but by virtue of the sunlight of æons of past ages.
John Borroughts

On the Lake(Auf dem See) by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

On the Lake
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Translated by J. S. Dwight

MY blood flows fresh, my soul finds food,
I roam the world at large;
And Nature,—smiles she not most good?
She holds my heart in charge.
The wavelets lift our little boat,
With the oars, in measured beat,
And hills, piled cloudlike, hither float
Our bounding bark to meet.

Eye, mine eye, why art thou sinking?
Of those dreams must still be thinking?
Go, Dream! golden as thou art;
Here, too, love and life have part.

Under the wave fly, blinking,
Shoals of stars, as I ponder;
Flocks of clouds hang drinking
Round the hills away yonder;
Morning wind is dancing
O’er the shadowy cove,
From the lake come glancing
Fruits half hid in the grove.

The original poem in German
Auf dem See

Und frische Nahrung, neues Blut
Saug ich aus freier Welt:
Wie ist Natur so hold und gut,
Die mich am Busen hält!

Die Welle wieget unsern Kahn
Im Rudertakt hinauf,
Und Berge, wolkig himmelan,
Begegnen unserm Lauf.

Aug, mein Aug, was sinkst du nieder?
Goldne Träume, kommt ihr wieder?
Weg, du Traum! so gold du bist:
Hier auch Lieb und Leben ist.

Auf der Welle blinken
Tausend schwebende Sterne,
Weiche Nebel trinken
Rings die türmende Ferne;

Morgenwind umflügelt
Die beschattete Bucht,
Und im See bespiegelt
Sich die reifende Frucht.

Use the first day of fall by Shauna Niequist

Use what you have, use what the world gives you. Use the first day of fall: bright flame before winter’s deadness; harvest; orange, gold, amber; cool nights and the smell of fire. Our tree-lined streets are set ablaze, our kitchens filled with the smells of nostalgia: apples bubbling into sauce, roasting squash, cinnamon, nutmeg, cider, warmth itself. The leaves as they spark into wild color just before they die are the world’s oldest performance art, and everything we see is celebrating one last violently hued hurrah before the black and white silence of winter.
Shauna Niequist

All living is relationship by Aldous Huxley

Never give children a chance of imagining that anything exists in isolation. Make it plain from the very beginning that all living is relationship. Show them relationships in the woods, in the fields, in the ponds and streams, in the village and in the country around it. Rub it in.
Aldous Huxley

Autumn Walk by Jane Austen

Jane ward Art

Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn–that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness–that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.
Jane Austen, Persuasion

I Sit beside the fire And Think by J.R.R Tolkien

I Sit And Think
J.R.R Tolkien

I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
in summers that have been;

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall ever see

For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago,
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.

Love the whole tree by Jiddu Krishnamurti

Love the whole tree
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Love not the shapely branch,
Nor place its image alone in your heart.
It dies away.

Love the whole tree;
Then you will love the shapely branch,
The tender and withered leaf,
The shy bud and the full-blown flower,
The falling petal and the dancing night,
The splendid shadow of full love.

Ah, love Life in its fullness.
It knows no decay.

Inspirational Spring poems:The Meadows In Spring by Edward Fitzgerald*Prayer in Spring by Robert Frost*My April Lady by Henry Van Dyke*Lines Written in Early Spring by WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Music:
GIOVANNI MARRADI-Morning has broken

Michael & inessa Garmash Art

The Meadows In Spring
Edward Fitzgerald

‘Tis a dull sight
To see the year dying,
When winter winds
Set the yellow wood sighing:
Sighing, oh! sighing.

When such a time cometh,
I do retire
Into an old room
Beside a bright fire:
Oh, pile a bright fire!

And there I sit
Reading old things,
Of knights and lorn damsels,
While the wind sings-
Oh, drearily sings!

I never look out
Nor attend to the blast;
For all to be seen
Is the leaves falling fast:
Falling, falling!

But close at the hearth,
Like a cricket, sit I,
Reading of summer
And chivalry-
Gallant chivalry!

Then with an old friend
I talk of our youth!
How ’twas gladsome, but often
Foolish, forsooth:
But gladsome, gladsome!

Or to get merry
We sing some old rhyme,
That made the wood ring again
In summertime-
Sweet summertime!

Then go we to smoking,
Silent and snug:
Nought passes between us,
Save a brown jug-
Sometimes!

And sometimes a tear
Will rise in each eye,
Seeing the two old friends
So merrily-
So merrily!

And ere to bed
Go we, go we,
Down on the ashes
We kneel on the knee,
Praying together!

Thus, then, live I,
Till, ‘mid all the gloom,
By heaven! the bold sun
Is with me in the room
Shining, shining!

Then the clouds part,
Swallow soaring between;
The spring is alive,
And the meadows are green!

I jump up, like mad,
Break the old pipe in twain,
And away to the meadows,
The meadows again!

Prayer in Spring
Robert Frost

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill.

My April Lady
Henry Van Dyke

When down the stair at morning
The sunbeams round her float,
Sweet rivulets of laughter
Are bubbling in her throat;
The gladness of her greeting
Is gold without alloy;
And in the morning sunlight
I think her name is Joy.

When in the evening twilight
The quiet book-room lies,
We read the sad old ballads,
While from her hidden eyes
The tears are falling, falling,
That give her heart relief;
And in the evening twilight,
I think her name is Grief.

My little April lady,
Of sunshine and of showers,
She weaves the old spring magic,
And breaks my heart in flowers!
But when her moods are ended,
She nestles like a dove;
Then, by the pain and rapture,
I know her name is Love.

Lines Written in Early Spring
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:—
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?