Celia Thaxter
When in these fresh mornings I go into my garden before any one is awake, I go for the time being into perfect happiness.Collection: Time
He who is born with a silver spoon in his mouth is generally considered a fortunate person, but his good fortune is small compared to that of the happy mortal who enters this world with a passion for flowers in his soul.Collection: Flower
Of all the wonderful things in the wonderful universe of God, nothing seems to me more surprising than the planting of a seed in the blank earth and the result thereof. Take that Poppy seed, for instance: it lies in your palm, the merest atom of matter, hardly visible, a speck, a pin's point in bulk, but within it is imprisoned a spirit of beauty ineffable, which will break its bonds and emerge from the dark ground and blossom in a splendor so dazzling as to baffle all powers of description.Collection: Beauty
There shall be an eternal summer in the grateful heart.Collection: Inspirational
When in these fresh mornings I go into my garden before anyone is awake, I go for the time being into perfect happiness. In this hour divinely fresh and still, the fair face of every flower salutes me with a silent joy. . . . All the cares, perplexities, and griefs of existence, all the burdens of life slip from my shoulders and leave me with the heart of a little child that asks nothing beyond the present moment of innocent bliss.Collection: Morning
One golden day redeems a weary yearCollection: Happiness
Ever since I could remember anything, flowers have been like dear friends to me, comforters, inspirers, powers to uplift and to cheer.Collection: Uplifting
Like the musician, the painter, the poet and the rest, the true lover of flowers is born, not made.Collection: Flower
As I work among my flowers, I find myself talking to them, reasoning and remonstrating with them, and adoring them as if they were human beings. Much laughter I provoke among my friends by so doing, but that is of no consequence. We are on such good terms, my flowers and I.Collection: Friendship
This very act of planting a seed in the earth has in it to me something beautiful. I always do it with a joy that is largely mixed with awe.Collection: Beautiful
Like the musician, the painter, the poet, and the rest, the true lover of flowers is born, not made. And he is born to happiness in this vale of tears, to a certain amount of the purest joy that earth can giver her children, joy that is tranquil, innocent, uplifting, unfailing.Collection: Happiness
Early in April, as I was vigorously hoeing in a corner, I unearthed a huge toad, to my perfect delight and satisfaction; he had lived all winter, he had doubtless fed on slugs all the autumn. I could have kissed him on the spot.Collection: Life
To stand by the beds at sunrise and see the flowers awake is a heavenly delight.Collection: Flower
When the snow is still blowing against the window-pane in January and February and the wild winds are howling without, what pleasure it is to plan for summer that is to be.Collection: Summer
The heart of God through his creation stirs, We thrill to feel it, trembling as the flowers That die to live again, his messengers, To keep faith firm in these sad souls of ours. The waves of Time may devastate our lives, The frosts of age may check our failing breath, They shall not touch the spirit that survives Triumphant over doubt and pain and death.Collection: Pain
I am fully and intensely aware that plants are conscious of love and respond to it as they do to nothing else.Collection: Love
Look to the East, where up the lucid sky; the morning climbs! The day shall yet be fair.Collection: Morning
Last week, when I went early into my garden, a rose-breasted grosbeak was sitting on the fence. Oh, he was beautiful as a flower. I hardly dared to breathe, I did not stir, and we gazed at each other fully five minutes before he concluded to move.Collection: Beautiful
As I hold the flower in my hand and think of trying to describe it, I realize how poor a creature I am, how impotent are words in the presence of such perfection.Collection: Beauty
Once more their weird laughter of the loons comes to my ear, the distance lends it a musical, melancholy sound. For a dangerous ledge off the lighthouse island floats in on the still air the gentle trolling of a warning bell as it swings on the rocking buoy; it might be tolling for the passing of summer and sweet weather with that persistent, pensive chime.Collection: Summer
So deeply is the gardener's instinct implanted in my soul, I really love the tools with which I work; the iron fork, the spade, the hoe, the rake, the trowel, and the watering pot are pleasant objects in my eyes.Collection: Love
The summer day was spoiled with fitful storm; At night the wind died and the soft rain dropped; With lulling murmur, and the air was warm, And all the tumult and the trouble stopped.Collection: Summer
Already the dandelions Are changed into vanishing ghosts.Collection: Vanishing
No sadder sound salutes you than the clear, Wild laughter of the loon.Collection: Laughter
Soon will set in the fitful weather, with fierce gales and sullen skies and frosty air, and it will be time to tuck up safely my roses and lillies and the rest for their winter sleep beneath the snow, where I never forget them, but ever dream of their wakening in happy summers yet to be.Collection: Summer
It seems to me the worst of all the plagues is the slug, the snail without a shell. He is beyond description repulsive, a mass of sooty, shapeless slime, and he devours everything.Collection: Animal
The toad has indeed no superior as a destroyer of noxious insects, and he possesses no bad habits and is entirely inoffensive himself, every owner of a garden should treat him with utmost hospitality.Collection: Animal
O happy, happy morning! O dear, familiar place! / O warm, sweet tears of Heaven, fast falling on my face! / O well-remembered, rainy wind, blow all my care away, / That I may be a child again this blissful morn of May.Collection: Sweet
The eternal sound of the sea on every side has a tendency to wear away the edge of human thought and perception.Collection: Ocean
Dear little head, that lies in calm content Within the gracious hollow that God made In every human shoulder, where He meant Some tired head for comfort should be laid.Collection: Lying
If death were the exception and not the rule, and we were not so swiftly to follow, these separations would be intolerably sad. We know no more of our next change of life than we knew of this before we were born into it; but that which we call death is merely change, who can doubt?Collection: Life Changing
O brief, bright smile of summer! O days divine and dear The voices of winter's sorrow Already we can hear. And we know that the frosts will find us, And the smiling skies grow rude, While we look in the face of Beauty, And worship her every mood.Collection: Summer
It is curious that the leaf should so love the light and the root so hate it.Collection: Hate
Across the narrow beach we flit, One little sand-piper and I; And fast I gather, bit by bit, The scattered drift-wood, bleached and dry, The wild waves reach their hands for it, The wild wind raves, the tide runs high, As up and down the beach we flit, One little sand-piper and I.Collection: Running
Oh, I never meant, in my old age, to become subject to the thrall of a love like this; it is almost dreadful, so absorbing, so stirring down to the deeps. For the tiny creature is so old and wise and sweet, and so fascinating in his sturdy common sense and clear intelligence; and his affection for me is a wonderful, exquisite thing, the sweetest flower that has bloomed for me in all my life through.Collection: Wise
As the days go on toward July, the earth becomes dry and all the flowers begin to thirst for moisture. Then from the hillside, some warm, still evening, the sweet rain-song of the robin echoes clear, and next day we wake up to a dim morning; soft flecks of cloud bar the sun's way, fleecy vapors steal across the sky, the southwest wind blows lightly, rippling the water into little waves that murmur melodiously as they kiss the shore.Collection: Summer