9 Denise Levertov Quotes on Nature

Denise Levertov quotes on nature

1. To leave the open fields and enter the forest, that was the rite. Knowing there was mystery, they could go. Go back now! And he receded among the multitude of forms, the twists and shadows they saw now, listening to the hum of the world's wood.

2. Praise the invisible sun burning beyond the white cold sky, giving us light and the chimney's shadow.

4. I like to find what's not found at once, but lies within something of another nature, in repose, distinct.

5. I like the juicy stem of grass that grows within the coarser leaf folded round, and the butteryellow glow in the narrow flute from which the morning-glory opens blue and cool on a hot morning.

10. Then as he sang it was no longer sounds only that made the music: he spoke, and as no tree listens I listened, and language came into my roots out of the earth, into my bark out of the air, into the pores of my greenest shoots gently as dew and there was no word he sang but I knew its meaning.

11. He told of journeys, of where sun and moon go while we stand in dark, of an earth-journey he dreamed he would take some day deeper than roots ... He told of the dreams of man, wars, passions, griefs, and I, a tree, understood words - ah, it seemed my thick bark would split like a sapling's that grew too fast in the spring when a late frost wounds it.

14. The music reached us. Clumsily, stumbling over our own roots, rustling our leaves in answer, we moved, we followed.

18. The wind, the birds, do not sound poorer but clearer, recalling our agony, and the way we danced.

35. Rain-diamonds, this winter morning, embellish the tangle of unpruned pear-tree twigs; each solitaire, placed, it appearrs, with considered judgement, bears the light beneath the rifted clouds - the indivisible shared out in endless abundance.