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ARBOR DA Y MANUAL. 
THE LOVE OF NATURE. 
The sounding cataract 
Haunted me like a passion ; the tall rock, 
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood. 
Their colors and their forms, were then to me 
An appetite,— a feeling and a love 
That had no need of a remoter charm 
By thought supplied, or any interest 
Unborrowed from the eye. 
That time is past, 
And all its aching joys are now no more, 
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this 
Faint I, nor mourn, nor murmur ; other gifts 
Have followed, for such loss, I would believe, 
Abundant recompense. For I have learned 
To look on nature, not as in the hour 
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes 
The still sad music of humanity, 
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power 
To chasten and subdue. 
And I have felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean, and the living air. 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 
A motion and a spirit that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all. thought, 
And rolls through all things. 
Therefore am I still 
A lover of the meadows and the woods 
And mountains, and of all that we behold 
From this green' earth ; of all the mighty world 
Of eye and ear, both what they half create 
And what perceive-; well pleased to recognize 
In nature, and the language of the sense. 
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, 
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 
Of all my moral being. 
_Wordsworth. 
I love not man the less but nature more. 
Byron’s Apostrophe. 
