Nature Quotations

Quotes and poems regarding nature from a variety of sources.

The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-sides dew pearled:
The larks on the wing:
The snails on the thorn;
God's in his heaven—
All's right with the world!

—Browning.

In fact there is nothing that keeps its youth
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.

—O. W. Holmes.

There's never a leaf or a blade too mean
To be some creature's palace.

—Lowell.

The best verses I have printed are the trees I have planted.

—Holmes.

There was never mystery
But 'tis figured in the flowers;
Was never secret history
But birds tell it in the bowers.

—Emerson.

Far down in the orchard I found her,
Her earnest eyes gazing aloft.
A baby hand waved me a warning,
A baby voice called to me—soft.

"Hush, mamma, don't frighten the birdies;
They're busy at work, don't you see?
A-picking the worms from the blossoms
A-growing on God's apple-tree!"

Ah, child, when thy life work is given,
God may not have great things for thee.
Be content if He sets thee to guarding
The blossoms upon His fruit tree.

Adelphi, Ohio.

—Mary Nowlan Wittwer.

Give fools their gold and knaves their power;
Let fortune's bubbles rise and fall;
Who sows a field, or trains a flower
Or plants a tree is more than all.
For he who blesses most is blest;
And God and man shall own his worth
Who toils to leave as his bequest
An added beauty to the earth.

—Whittier.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.