There is religion in everything around us,

a calm and holy religion in the unbreathing things in Nature.

It is a meek and blessed influence,

Stealing in as It were unaware upon the heart;

It comes quickly, and without excitement;

It has no terror, no gloom;

It does not rouse up the passions;

It is untrammelled by creeds;

It is written on the arched sky;

It looks out from every star;

It is in the sailing cloud and on the Invisible Wind;

It is among the hills and valleys of the Earth

Where the shrubless pinnacle pierces

the thin atmosphere of eternal winter,

Or where the mighty forest bends before the strong wind,

With its dark waves of green foliage;

It is spread out like a legible language

upon the broad face of an unsleeping ocean;

It is the poetry of Nature;

It is that which uplifts the spirit within us . . .

and which opens to our imagination to

a Earth of spiritual beauty and holiness.


John Ruskin