Thou art a man God is no more Thy own humanity Learn to adore
William BlakeRead
O thou who passest through our valleys in Thy strength, curb thy fierce steeds, allay the heat That flames from their large nostrils! Thou, O Summer, Oft pitchest here thy golden tent, and oft Beneath our oaks hast slept, while we beheld With joy thy ruddy limbs and flourishing hair.
Interpretation
The quote celebrates the beauty and strength of summer while calling for its gentleness in nature.
William Blake's quote personifies summer as a powerful entity that must be tempered to bring joy rather than destruction. It invites the reader to appreciate the vibrant life and warmth of summer, while also recognizing the need for balance, depicting nature as both majestic and nurturing.
In practice
A speaker at an environmental conference might quote this to emphasize the beauty of nature and the need for its preservation.
Thou art a man God is no more Thy own humanity Learn to adore
In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Every Night and every Morn Some to Misery are born. Every Morn and every Night Some are born to Sweet Delight, Some are born to Endless Night.
As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.
He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars.
Let every Christian, as much as in him lies, engage himself openly and publicly, before all the World, in some mental pursuit for the Building up of Jerusalem.
After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains.
Good farmers, who take seriously their duties as stewards of Creation and of their land's inheritors, contribute to the welfare of society in more ways than society usually acknowledges, or even knows. These farmers produce valuable goods, of course; but they also conserve soil, they conserve water, they conserve wildlife, they conserve open space, they conserve scenery.
We have such a brief opportunity to pass on to our children our love for this Earth, and to tell our stories. These are the moments when the world is made whole. In my children's memories, the adventures we've had together in nature will always exist.
Then in October, Indian Summer, the air turned so soft, the sunlight so fragile, and each day's loveliness so poignantly doomed that even self-ignorance and restlessness felt like profound states of being, and he just wandered the empty beaches and misty headlands in a state of serene confusion and awe.
In the world at large, people are rewarded or punished in ways that are often utterly random. In the garden, cause and effect, labor and reward, are re-coupled. Gardening makes sense in a senseless world. By extension, then, the more gardens in the world, the more justice, the more sense is created.
There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.
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