“Clear pebbles of the rain”

“You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.Meanwhile the world goes on.Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rainare moving across the landscapes,over the prairies and the deep trees,the mountains and the rivers.Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,are heading home again.Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,the world offers itself to your imagination,calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –over and over announcing your placein the family of things.”

“A dog comes to you and lives with you in your own house, but you do not therefore own her, as you do not own the rain, or the trees, or the laws which pertain to them”

“And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money, I don't even want to come in out of the rain.”

“Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me"Last nightthe rainspoke to meslowly, saying,what joyto come fallingout of the brisk cloud,to be happy againin a new wayon the earth!That’s what it saidas it dropped,smelling of iron,and vanishedlike a dream of the oceaninto the branchesand the grass below.Then it was over.The sky cleared.I was standingunder a tree.The tree was a treewith happy leaves,and I was myself,and there were stars in the skythat were also themselvesat the moment,at which momentmy right handwas holding my left handwhich was holding the treewhich was filled with starsand the soft rain—imagine! imagine!the wild and wondrous journeysstill to be ours.”

“GOING TO WALDENIt isn't very far as highways lie.I might be back by nightfall, having seenThe rough pines, and the stones, and the clear water.Friends argue that I might be wiser for it.They do not hear that far-off Yankee whisper:How dull we grow from hurrying here and there!Many have gone, and think me half a foolTo miss a day away in the cool country.Maybe. But in a book I read and cherish,Going to Walden is not so easy a thingAs a green visit. It is the slow and difficultTrick of living, and finding it where you are.”

“for how many years have you gone through the houseshutting the windows,while the rain was still five miles awayand veering, o plum-colored clouds, to the northaway from youand you did not even know enoughto be sorry,you were gladthose silver sheets, with the occasional golden staple,were sweeping on, elsewhere,violent and electric and uncontrollable--and will you find yourself finally wanting to forgetall enclosures, includingthe enclosure of yourself, o lonely leaf, and will youdash finally, frantically,to the windows and haul them open and lean outto the dark, silvered sky, to everythingthat is beyond capture, shoutingi'm here, i'm here! now, now, now, now, now.”