Lord Byron - John Muir - Robert Frost - David Attenborough TV - Michael Montoure - Bratton & Kennedy - Theodore Roethke - John Milton - William Shakespeare - William Wordsworth - Jack Kerouac - Henry David Thoreau - Thomas Hardy -
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more. Lord Byron
Keep close to Nature’s heart ... and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean. John Muir
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference. Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
Life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open. Robert Frost, Birches 1916
The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. Robert Frost, Stopping Before Woods on a Snowy Evening
Birches on the timescale of the wood have short lives ... the Oaks rule. David Attenborough, The Private Life of Plants: The Social Struggle, BBC 1995
He’d grown unused to woods like this. He’d become accustomed to the Northwest, evergreen and shaded dark. Here he was surrounded by soft leaves, not needles; leaves that carried their deaths secretly inside them, that already heard the whispers of Autumn. Roots and branches that knew things. Michael Montoure, Slices
If you go down to the woods today
You’re sure of a big surprise
If you go down to the woods today
You’d better go in disguise
For every Bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain because
Today’s the day the Teddy Bears have their Picnic. John W Bratton & James B Kennedy
In a dark wood I saw –
I saw my several selves
Come running from the leaves,
Lewd, tiny careless lives
That scuttled under stones,
Or broke, but would not go. Theodore Roethke, The Exorcism, 1958
The woods, and desert caves,
With wild thyme and gadding vine o’ergrown. John Milton, Lycidas, 1638
Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The season’s difference; as, the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrank with cold, I smile and say,
‘This is no flattery.’ William Shakespeare, As You Like It II i 3
Out of this wood do not desire to go. William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream III i 159
With gentle hand
Touch – for there is a spirit in the woods. William Wordsworth, Nutting, 1800
The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling. Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived ... I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swathe and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms. Henry David Thoreau
To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. At the passing of the breeze the fir-trees sob and moan no less distinctly than they rock; the holly whistles as it battles with itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech rustles while its flat boughs rise and fall. And winter, which modifies the note of such trees as shed their leaves, does not destroy its individuality. Thomas Hardy, Under a Greenwood Tree