拉爾夫·沃爾多·愛默生/Ralph Waldo Emerson
To go into solitude,a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society.I am not solitary whilst I read and write,though nobod y is with me.But if a man would be alone,let him look at the stars.Th e rays that come from those heavenly worlds,will separate between him a nd what he touches.One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design,to give man,in the heavenly bodies,the perpetual pre sence of the sublime.Seen in the streets of cities,how great they are!If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years,how would men believe and adore;and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown!But every night come out these env oys of beauty,and light the universe with their admonishing smile.
The stars awaken a certain reverence,because though always present,they are inaccessible;but all natural objects make a kindred impression,when the mind is open to their influence.Nature never wears a mean ap pearance.Neither does the wisest man extort her secret,and lose his cu riosity by finding out all her perfection.Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit.The flowers,the animals,the mountains,reflected the wi sdom of his best hour,as much as they had delighted the simplicity of h is childhood.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 sti ck 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 twent y or thirty farms.Miller owns this field,Locke that,and Manning the w oodland 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 p arts,that is,the poet.This is the best part of these men's farms,ye t 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 h ave a very superficial seeing.The sun illuminates only the eye of the m an,but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.The lover of nat ure is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to ea ch other;who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of ma nhood.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 hi s impertinent griefs,he shall be glad with me.Not the sun or the summe r alone,but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight;for ev ery hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of t he mind,from breathless noon to grimmest midnight.Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece.