Ralph Waldo Emerson - Nature - Preface To Podcast

PART I

"The incommunicable trees begin to persuade us to live with them, and quit our life of solemn trifles. Here no history, or church, or state, is interpolated on the divine sky and the immortal year". Let us, at long last, heed their arboreal whispers, and embrace their silent grandeur. Beneath the protection of their ample shade, between the columns of their rigid bark, we’ll build our nests, live as neighbors, and, better still, love as friends.

PART II

“I have seen the softness and beauty of the summer clouds floating feathery overhead, enjoying, as it seemed, their height and privilege of motion, whilst yet they appeared not so much the drapery of this place and hour, as forelooking to some pavilions and gardens of festivity beyond”. Might we not also gain admittance to this distant, empyrean place? Might we not forego our rusted clay and join that white plumage in which the sweet dew of divine precipitation gathers? I think we might.