To Nature

Unknown

To Nature

It may indeed be phantasy when I

Essay to draw from all created things

Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings;

And trace in leaves and flowers that round me lie

Lessons of love and earnest piety.

So let it be: and if the wide world rings

In mock of this belief, to me it brings

Nor fear, nor grief, nor vain perplexity.

So will I build my altar in the fields,

And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,

And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields

Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee,

Thee only God! and Thou shalt not despise

Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

from The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, ed. Phillis Levin


"So will I build my altar in the fields." This reminds me of Luci Shaw's poem May 20: Very Early Morning - in it the field itself speaks, and she wishes to emulate it - "make of our hearts a field to raise your praise."  Or even Dylan Thomas describing how he and his mother walked "through parables of sunlight, and the legends of the green chapels".  Nature as a place of worship, sacred, a place of praise, of mystery and stories, a chapel or a cathedral, is a theme I never tire of. (And that bit about the scent of wildflowers being like incense in an offering, I'm going to remember that the next time I walk past a foam flower or a wild violet.) I like Coleridge's "So let it be." Let people think what they want, let people laugh - his mind isn't changed. I'm with him on that, too.