“The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature-of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter-such health, such cheer, they afford forever! and such sympathy have they ever with our race, that all Nature would be affected, and the sun’s brightness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in midsummer, if anyone should ever for a just cause grieve. Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?”

“Winter hurled more wind and rain at the city than it ever had before. Clouds dashed about in all directions emptying their thunder, hail and rain. The horizon was choked in fog.”

“Joys come from simple and natural things; mist over meadows, sunlight on leaves, the path of the moon over water. Even rain and wind and stormy clouds bring joy.”

“I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew:Of wind I sang, a wind there came and in the branches blew.Beyond the Sun, beyond the Moon, the foam was on the Sea,And by the strand of Ilmarin there grew a Golden Tree.Beneath the stars of Ever-eve in Eldamar it shone,In Eldamar beside the walls of Elven Tirion.There long the golden leaves have grown upon the branching years,While here beyond the Sundering Seas now fall the Elven-tears.O Lórien! Too long I have dwelt upon this Hither ShoreAnd in a fading crown have twined the golden elanor.But if of ships I now would sing, what ship would come to me,What ship would bear me ever back across so wide a Sea?”

“The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach. I have heard them all, and of the three elemental voices, that of ocean is the most awesome, beautiful and varied.”

“a wind has blown the rain away & the sky away & all the leaves away, & the trees stand. i think i, too, have known autumn too long.”