The poetry of Nature.

These words from John Ruskin resonate in my heart and echo my feelings when I am communing with Nature.

 

There is religion in everything around us,

 

A calm and holy religion

 

In the unbreathing things in Nature.

 

It is a meek and blessed influence,

 

Stealing in as it were unaware upon the heart;

 

It comes quickly, and without excitement;

 

It has no terror, no gloom;

 

It does not rouse up the passions;

 

It is untrammelled by creeds…

 

It is written on the arched sky;

 

It looks out from every star;

 

It is on the sailing cloud and in the invisible wind;

 

It is among the hills and valleys of the earth

 

Where the shrubless mountain-top pierces the thin atmosphere

 

of eternal winter,

 

Or where the mighty forest fluctuates before the strong wind,

 

With its dark waves of green foliage;

 

It is spread out like a legible language upon the broad face of

an unsleeping ocean;

It is the poetry of Nature;

 

It is that which uplifts the spirit within us…

 

And which opens to our imagination a world of spiritual beauty

 

and holiness.