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The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.
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When held up to the window pane, What fixed my baby stare? The glory of the glittering rain, And newness everywhere.
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Alfred Austin said, "Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are."
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We are all alike, and we love to keep passion aglow at our feet, Like one that sitteth in shade and complacently smiles at the heat.
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Tis true among fields and woods I sing, Aloof from cities--that my poor strains Were born, like the simple flowers you bring, In English meadows and English lanes.
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Perhaps a maiden's bashfulness is more A matron's lesson than our lips aver.
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Where has thou been all the dumb winter days When neither sunlight was nor smile of flowers, Neither life, nor love, nor frolic, Only expanse melancholic, With never a note of thy exhilarating lays?
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There is no gardening without humility. Nature is constantly sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class for some egregious blunder.
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My virgin sense of sound was steeped In the music of young streams; And roses through the casement peeped, And scented all my dreams.
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Through the dripping weeks that follow One another slow, and soak Summer's extinguished fire and autumn's drifting smoke.
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Is life worth living? Yes, so long as there is wrong to right. So long as faith with freedom reigns and loyal hope survives, And gracious charity remains to leaven lowly lives; While there is only one untrodden tract for intellect or will, And men are free to think and act, Life is worth living still.
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Falling stars are high examples sent To warn, not lure. Gross fancy says they are Substantial meteors; but that is not so. They are the merest phantasies of Night, When she's asleep, and, dimly visited By past effects, she dreams of Lucifer Hurled out of Heaven.
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In my song you catch at times Note sweeter far than mine, And in the tangle of my rhymes Can scent the eglantine.
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Exclusiveness in a garden is a mistake as great as it is in society.
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Pale January lay In its cradle day by day Dead or living, hard to say.
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If Nature built by rule and square, Than man what wiser would she be? What wins us is her careless care, And sweet unpunctuality.
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The bright incarnate spirit of the Morn.
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In vain would science scan and trace Firmly her aspect. All the while, There gleams upon her far-off face A vague unfathomable smile.
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Doth Nature draw me, 'tis because, Unto my seeming, there doth lurk A lawlessness about her laws, More mood than purpose in her work.
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Public opinion is no more than this: what people think that other people think.
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There is no gardening without humility
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No verse which is unmusical or obscure can be regarded as poetry whatever other qualities it may possess.
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So, timely you came, and well you chose, You came when most needed, my winter rose. From the snow I pluck you, and fondly press Your leaves 'twixt the leaves of my leaflessness.
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We come from the earth, we return to the earth, and in between we garden.