At one with nature

The reliance of humans on nature has suffered from the rise of modern religion. The disappearance of deities of the earth and our own elevation into the realms of being made in God’s image has stunted our regard for the rest of nature; nature in the service of man has blinded us to our reliance on it. Ancient societies (and not so ancient, but always disdained for their ‘backwardness’) understood the interdependence very well. Our global and daily desecration of the environment would have been seen as criminal under a different belief system. This poem by Thomas Hardy catches our oneness with nature very well. 

Transformations 

 

Portion of this yew

Is a man my grandsire knew,

Bosomed here at its foot:

This branch may be his wife,

A ruddy human life

Now turned to a green shoot.

 

These grasses must be made

Of her who often prayed,

Last century, for repose;

And the fair girl long ago

Whom I often tried to know

May be entering this rose.

 

So, they are not underground,

But as nerves and veins abound

In the growths of upper air,

And they feel the sun and rain,

And the energy again

That made them what they were!