Greenspace Alliance of Canada's Capital

Tree, McCarthy area, Nov. 2006,   photograph by Ben Glossop
 
On the Companionship With Nature by Archibald Lampman
 
Let us be much with Nature; not as they
That labour without seeing, that employ
Her unloved forces, blindly, without joy;
Not those whose hands and crude delights obey
The old  brute passion to hunt down and slay;
But rather as children of one common birth,
Discerning in each natural fruit of earth
Kinship and bond with this designer clay.
Let us be with her wholly at all hours,
With the fond lover's zest, who is content
If his ear hears, and if his eye but sees;
So shall we grow like her in mind and bent,
Our bodies stately as her blessed trees,
Our thoughts as sweet and sumptuous as her flowers.