Nature's Beauty

"Not only in grass fields with green leaf and running brook did this constant desire find renewal.  More deeply still with living human beauty; the perfection of form, the simple fact of forms, ravished and always will ravish me away. In this lies the outcome and end of all the loveliness of sunshine and green leaf, of flowers, pure water and sweet air. This is embodiment and highest expression; the scattered, uncertain, and designless loveliness of tree and sunshine brought to shape.  Through this beauty I prayed deepest and longest, and down to this hour.  The shape the divine idea of that shape the swelling muscle or the dreamy limb, strong sinew or curve of bust, Aphrodite or Hercules, it is the same.  That I may have the soul-life, the soul-nature, let the divine beauty bring to me divine soul."

  Richard Jefferies,  The Story of My Heart