The groves were God's first temples.—Bryant.

Nature, the vicar of the Almighty Lord.—Chaucer.

The liquid notes that close the eye of day, (the Nightingale).—Milton.

When spring unlocks the flowers to paint the laughing soil.—Bishop Heber.

O, for a seat in some poetic nook,

Just hid with trees and sparkling with a brook.—Leigh Hunt.

By shallow rivers, to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals.—Christopher Marlowe.

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.—Wordsworth.

To him who in the love of nature holds

Communion with her visible forms, she speaks

A various language.—Bryant.

And this one life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything.—Shakespeare.

And now 'twas like all instruments,

Now like a lonely flute;

And now it is an angel's song,

That makes the heavens be mute.—Coleridge.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture in 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.—Byron.