"Nature Adresses and Lectures" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emerson Ralph Waldo )

When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but
most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression
made by manifold natural objects. It is this which distinguishes the
stick of timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet. The
charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up
of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that,
and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the
landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but
he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is
the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds
give no title.


To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons
do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing.
The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye
and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward
and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has
retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His
intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food.
In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in
spite of real sorrows. Nature says, -- he is my creature, and maugre
all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or
the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of
delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a
different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest
midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a
mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible
virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under
a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of
special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am
glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his
years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is
always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these
plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial
festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of
them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and
faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no
disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot
repair. Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe
air, and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes.
I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the
currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or
particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign
and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, -- master or
servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of
uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something
more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil
landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man