Come forth into the light of things,

Let Nature be your teacher.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): The Tables Turned.

Boughs are daily rifled

By the gusty thieves,

And the book of Nature

Getteth short of leaves.

Thomas Hood (1798-1845): The Season.

Sighing that Nature form'd but one such man,

And broke the die, in moulding Sheridan.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Monody on the Death of Sheridan. Line 117.

Nature, they say, doth dote,

And cannot make a man

Save on some worn-out plan,

Repeating us by rote.

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891): Ode at the Harvard Commemoration, July 21, 1865.

For Art may err, but Nature cannot miss.

John Dryden (1631-1701): The Cock and the Fox. Line 452.

The canvas glow'd beyond ev'n Nature warm,

The pregnant quarry teem'd with human form.

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774): The Traveller. Line 137.

Thou unassuming commonplace

Of Nature.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): To the same Flower.

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act i. Sc. 5.

From harmony, from heavenly harmony,

This universal frame began:

From harmony to harmony

Through all the compass of the notes it ran,

The diapason closing full in Man.

John Dryden (1631-1701): A Song for St. Cecilia's Day. Line 11.

The course of Nature is the art of God.

Edward Young (1684-1765): Night Thoughts. Night ix. Line 1267.

Those old credulities, to Nature dear,

Shall they no longer bloom upon the stock

Of history?

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Memorials of a Tour in Italy. iv.

The slender debt to Nature's quickly paid,

Discharged, perchance, with greater ease than made.

Robert Herrick (1591-1674): Emblems. Book ii. Emblem 13.

Diseased Nature oftentimes breaks forth

In strange eruptions.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry IV. Part I. Act iii. Sc. 1.

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York,

And all the clouds that loured upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments,

Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front;

And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds

To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,

He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber

To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,

Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;

I, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty

To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;

I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion,

Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,

Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time

Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,

And that so lamely and unfashionable

That dogs bark at me as I halt by them,—

Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,

Have no delight to pass away the time,

Unless to spy my shadow in the sun.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Richard III. Act i. Sc. 1.

I am thy father's spirit,

Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,

And for the day confin'd to fast in fires,

Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature

Are burnt and purg'd away. But that I am forbid

To tell the secrets of my prison-house,

I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word

Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,

Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,

Thy knotted and combined locks to part

And each particular hair to stand an end,

Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:

But this eternal blazon must not be

To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 5.

Nature, exerting an unwearied power,

Forms, opens, and gives scent to every flower;

Spreads the fresh verdure of the field, and leads

The dancing Naiads through the dewy meads.

William Cowper (1731-1800): Table Talk. Line 690.

Extremes in nature equal ends produce;

In man they join to some mysterious use.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Man. Epistle ii. Line 205.

Extremes in Nature equal good produce;

Extremes in man concur to general use.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Moral Essays. Epistle iii. Line 161.

For all that faire is, is by nature good;

That is a signe to know the gentle blood.

Edmund Spenser (1553-1599): An Hymne in Honour of Beautie. Line 139.

And binding Nature fast in fate,

Left free the human will.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Universal Prayer. Stanza 3.

'T is a fault to Heaven,

A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,

To reason most absurd.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 2.

I am as free as Nature first made man,

Ere the base laws of servitude began,

When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

John Dryden (1631-1701): The Conquest of Granada. Part i. Act i. Sc. 1.

The fool of nature stood with stupid eyes

And gaping mouth, that testified surprise.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Cymon and Iphigenia. Line 107.

Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!

Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,

Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,

Be thy intents wicked or charitable,

Thou comest in such a questionable shape

That I will speak to thee: I 'll call thee Hamlet,

King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me!

Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell

Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,

Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre,

Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd,

Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws

To cast thee up again. What may this mean,

That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel

Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,

Making night hideous, and we fools of nature

So horridly to shake our disposition

With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 4.

Let dogs delight to bark and bite,

For God hath made them so;

Let bears and lions growl and fight,

For 't is their nature too.

Isaac Watts (1674-1748): Divine Songs. Song xvi.

Sighing that Nature form'd but one such man,

And broke the die, in moulding Sheridan.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Monody on the Death of Sheridan. Line 117.

Now, by two-headed Janus,

Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Merchant of Venice. Act i. Sc. 1.

Earth felt the wound; and Nature from her seat,

Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe

That all was lost.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book ix. Line 782.

Nature her custom holds,

Let shame say what it will.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act iv. Sc. 7.

His nature is too noble for the world:

He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,

Or Jove for's power to thunder.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Coriolanus. Act iii. Sc. 1.

To hold, as 't were, the mirror up to nature.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act iii. Sc. 2.

To him who in the love of Nature holds

Communion with her visible forms, she speaks

A various language.

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878): Thanatopsis.

Ah, how unjust to Nature and himself

Is thoughtless, thankless, inconsistent man!

Edward Young (1684-1765): Night thoughts. Night ii. Line 112.

Yet do I fear thy nature;

It is too full o' the milk of human kindness.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act i. Sc. 5.

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;

Nature I loved; and next to Nature, Art.

I warm'd both hands against the fire of life;

It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864): Dying Speech of an old Philosopher.

And smale foules maken melodie,

That slepen alle night with open eye,

So priketh hem nature in hir corages;

Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages.

Geoffrey Chaucer (1328-1400): Canterbury Tales. Prologue. Line 9.

Too nicely Jonson knew the critic's part;

Nature in him was almost lost in Art.

William Collins (1720-1756): To Sir Thomas Hammer on his Edition of Shakespeare.

And force them, though it was in spite

Of Nature and their stars, to write.

Samuel Butler (1600-1680): Hudibras. Part i. Canto i. Line 647.

To him who in the love of Nature holds

Communion with her visible forms, she speaks

A various language.

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878): Thanatopsis.

Nature in you stands on the very verge

Of her confine.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Lear. Act ii. Sc. 4.

Nature's above art in that respect.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Lear. Act iv. Sc. 6.

All nature is but art, unknown to thee;

All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;

All discord, harmony not understood;

All partial evil, universal good;

And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,

One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Man. Epistle i. Line 289.

Nature is fine in love, and where 't is fine,

It sends some precious instance of itself

After the thing it loves.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act iv. Sc. 5.

For all that faire is, is by nature good;

That is a signe to know the gentle blood.

Edmund Spenser (1553-1599): An Hymne in Honour of Beautie. Line 139.

My nature is subdu'd

To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Sonnet cxi.

The course of Nature is the art of God.

Edward Young (1684-1765): Night Thoughts. Night ix. Line 1267.

His nature is too noble for the world:

He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,

Or Jove for's power to thunder.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Coriolanus. Act iii. Sc. 1.

Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appear'd,

And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard:

To carry nature lengths unknown before,

To give a Milton birth, ask'd ages more.

William Cowper (1731-1800): Table Talk. Line 556.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

Little we see in Nature that is ours.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Miscellaneous Sonnets. Part i. xxxiii.

As in the eye of Nature he has lived,

So in the eye of Nature let him die!

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): The Old Cumberland Beggar.

Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,

But looks through Nature up to Nature's God.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Man. Epistle iv. Line 331.

What more felicitie can fall to creature

Than to enjoy delight with libertie,

And to be lord of all the workes of Nature,

To raine in th' aire from earth to highest skie,

To feed on flowres and weeds of glorious feature.

Edmund Spenser (1553-1599): Muiopotmos: or, The Fate of the Butterflie. Line 209.

Too nicely Jonson knew the critic's part;

Nature in him was almost lost in Art.

William Collins (1720-1756): To Sir Thomas Hammer on his Edition of Shakespeare.

Sighing that Nature form'd but one such man,

And broke the die, in moulding Sheridan.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Monody on the Death of Sheridan. Line 117.

Creation sleeps! 'T is as the general pulse

Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause,—

An awful pause! prophetic of her end.

Edward Young (1684-1765): Night thoughts. Night i. Line 23.

Exceeding fair she was not; and yet fair

In that she never studied to be fairer

Than Nature made her; beauty cost her nothing,

Her virtues were so rare.

George Chapman (1557-1634): All Fools. Act i. Sc. 1.

To see her is to love her,

And love but her forever;

For Nature made her what she is,

And never made anither!

Robert Burns (1759-1796): Bonny Lesley.

O woman! lovely woman! Nature made thee

To temper man: we had been brutes without you.

Angels are painted fair, to look like you:

There's in you all that we believe of heaven,—

Amazing brightness, purity, and truth,

Eternal joy, and everlasting love.

Thomas Otway (1651-1685): Venice Preserved. Act i. Sc. 1.

Before man made us citizens, great Nature made us men.

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891): On the Capture of Fugitive Slaves near Washington.

His life was gentle, and the elements

So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up

And say to all the world, "This was a man!"

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Julius Caesar. Act v. Sc. 5.

Those obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things,

Fallings from us, vanishings,

Blank misgivings of a creature

Moving about in worlds not realized,

High instincts before which our mortal nature

Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Ode. Intimations of Immortality. Stanza 9.

Call it not vain: they do not err

Who say that when the poet dies

Mute Nature mourns her worshipper,

And celebrates his obsequies.

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832): Lay of the Last Minstrel. Canto v. Stanza 1.

And muse on Nature with a poet's eye.

Thomas Campbell (1777-1844): Pleasures of Hope. Part ii. Line 98.

The deep of night is crept upon our talk,

And nature must obey necessity.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Julius Caesar. Act iv. Sc. 3.

Knowing that Nature never did betray

The heart that loved her.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.

Thyself and thy belongings

Are not thine own so proper as to waste

Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.

Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,

Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues

Did not go forth of us, 't were all alike

As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd

But to fine issues, nor Nature never lends

The smallest scruple of her excellence

But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines

Herself the glory of a creditor,

Both thanks and use.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Measure for Measure. Act i. Sc. 1.

Man makes a death which Nature never made.

Edward Young (1684-1765): Night Thoughts. Night iv. Line 15.

There's no such thing in Nature; and you 'll draw

A faultless monster which the world ne'er saw.

Sheffield, Duke Of Buckinghamshire (1649-1720): Essay on Poetry.

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 1788-1824: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto iv. Stanza 178.

Between the acting of a dreadful thing

And the first motion, all the interim is

Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream:

The Genius and the mortal instruments

Are then in council; and the state of man,

Like to a little kingdom, suffers then

The nature of an insurrection.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Julius Caesar. Act ii. Sc. 1.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Troilus and Cressida. Act iii. Sc. 3.

Out from the heart of Nature rolled

The burdens of the Bible old.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): The Problem.

All that lives must die,

Passing through nature to eternity.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 2.

Put out the light, and then put out the light:

If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,

I can again thy former light restore

Should I repent me; but once put out thy light,

Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature,

I know not where is that Promethean heat

That can thy light relume.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Othello. Act v. Sc. 2.

Framed in the prodigality of nature.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Richard III. Act i. Sc. 2.

Soft peace she brings; wherever she arrives

She builds our quiet as she forms our lives;

Lays the rough paths of peevish Nature even,

And opens in each heart a little heaven.

Matthew Prior (1664-1721): Charity.

Now o'er the one half-world

Nature seems dead.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act ii. Sc. 1.

The Grave, dread thing!

Men shiver when thou 'rt named: Nature, appall'd,

Shakes off her wonted firmness.

Robert Blair (1699-1747): The Grave. Part i. Line 9.

Happiness depends, as Nature shows,

Less on exterior things than most suppose.

William Cowper (1731-1800): Table Talk. Line 246.

I'm weary of conjectures,—this must end 'em.

Thus am I doubly armed: my death and life,

My bane and antidote, are both before me:

This in a moment brings me to an end;

But this informs me I shall never die.

The soul, secured in her existence, smiles

At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.

The stars shall fade away, the sun himself

Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years;

But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,

Unhurt amidst the war of elements,

The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719): Cato. Act v. Sc. 1.

To the solid ground

Of Nature trusts the mind that builds for aye.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): A Volant Tribe of Bards on Earth.

Some things are of that nature as to make

One's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache.

John Bunyan (1628-1688): Pilgrim's Progress. The Author's Way of sending forth his Second Part of the Pilgrim.

To him who in the love of Nature holds

Communion with her visible forms, she speaks

A various language.

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878): Thanatopsis.

Hobbes clearly proves that every creature

Lives in a state of war by nature.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745): Poetry, a Rhapsody.

Auld Nature swears the lovely dears

Her noblest work she classes, O;

Her 'prentice han' she tried on man,

And then she made the lasses, O!

Robert Burns (1759-1796): Green grow the Rashes.

No tears

Dim the sweet look that Nature wears.

Henry W Longfellow (1807-1882): Sunrise on the Hills.

Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Coriolanus. Act ii. Sc. 1.

Recognizes ever and anon

The breeze of Nature stirring in his soul.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): The Excursion. Book iv.

Nature, the vicar of the Almightie Lord.

Geoffrey Chaucer (1328-1400): The Assembly of Fowles. Line 379.

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,

This precious stone set in the silver sea,

Which serves it in the office of a wall

Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands,—

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Richard II. Act ii. Sc. 1.

Let dogs delight to bark and bite,

For God hath made them so;

Let bears and lions growl and fight,

For 't is their nature too.

Isaac Watts (1674-1748): Divine Songs. Song xvi.

True wit is Nature to advantage dress'd,

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Criticism. Part ii. Line 97.

Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds,

Exhilarate the spirit, and restore

The tone of languid nature.

William Cowper (1731-1800): The Task. Book i. The Sofa. Line 181.

Ah, how unjust to Nature and himself

Is thoughtless, thankless, inconsistent man!

Edward Young (1684-1765): Night thoughts. Night ii. Line 112.

Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,

But looks through Nature up to Nature's God.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Man. Epistle iv. Line 331.

And not from Nature up to Nature's God,

But down from Nature's God look Nature through.

Robert Montgomery (1807-1855): Luther. A Landscape of Domestic Life.

Refrain to-night,

And that shall lend a kind of easiness

To the next abstinence: the next more easy;

For use almost can change the stamp of nature.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act iii. Sc. 4.

E'en from the tomb the voice of nature cries,

E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771): Elegy in a Country Churchyard. Stanza 23.

All Nature wears one universal grin.

Henry Fielding (1707-1754): Tom Thumb the Great. Act i. Sc. 1.

Of what I call God,

And fools call Nature.

Robert Browning (1812-1890): The Ring and the Book. The Pope. Line 1073.

The life which others pay let us bestow,

And give to fame what we to nature owe.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Iliad of Homer. Book xii. Line 393.

But who can paint

Like Nature? Can imagination boast,

Amid its gay creation, hues like hers?

James Thomson (1700-1748): The Seasons. Spring. Line 465.

Should the whole frame of Nature round him break,

In ruin and confusion hurled,

He, unconcerned, would hear the mighty crack,

And stand secure amidst a falling world.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719): Horace. Ode iii. Book iii.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,

Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Man. Epistle i. Line 267.

Into this wild abyss,

The womb of Nature and perhaps her grave.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book ii. Line 910.

A violet in the youth of primy nature,

Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,

The perfume and suppliance of a minute.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 3.