In the three previous posts I have focused on individual poets. Here I am going to put together a few brief lines from others, the theme of which will be a spiritual perspective on nature.
Materialist science claims that the physical universe is merely an accidental collocation of atoms, that life and consciousness are extremely unlikely accidents of nature and evolution; humanity is therefore a meaningless blip in an essentially dead mechanism. Spiritual teachings claim, on the contrary, that the universe is actually a manifestation of consciousness, nothing but life and consciousness; it is in fact the body of God, and there is therefore no such thing as inorganic matter.
Here are three poets who seem to agree with this perspective:
- William Blake: “Every rock is deluged with Deity”
- Gerard Manley Hopkins: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God”
- Alexander Pope: “All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body nature is and God the soul”
(All three are quoted together by George Trevelyan, A Vision of the Aquarian Age, Gateway Books, 1994, p7.)
They might be wrong, but I know whose version I prefer!