Foundations of American Environmental Thought and Action 5
her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like
the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall
be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice
of melody.Source: Holy Bible, Vol. 1 (Philadelphia: R. Aitken,
1782), Genesis 1: 27-29, 6: 17-19, 8: 1, 15-17; Isaiah 32:
13, 15-16, 51: 3.Until the spirit be poured upon us from on
high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field, and
the fruitful field be counted for a forest.
Then judgment shall dwell in the wilderness,
and righteousness remain in the fruitful field.
...
[The Lord shall comfort Zion: he will
comfort all her waste places, and he will make
DOCUMENT 2: Virgil’s Pastoral View of Nature (c. 50 B.C.E.)
From the age of the Greeks and Romans through the Renaissance, nature was considered to be at its most
sublime when molded by the human hand and turned into farmland, gardens, or parks—land that provided
both serenity and sustenance. This domesticated nature was celebrated in pastoral poetry, such as that of the
Roman poet Virgil. Virgil's “Pastorals” or “Eclogues” as they are frequently called, depict the domesticated
countryside as a place of joy for those who live there and a place yearned for by those who do not. In this
extract, Meliboeus, who has been turned out of his land in a redistribution of property by the Roman emperor
Augustus, is speaking to Tityrus, who has been permitted to stay.
The celebration of nature in poetry and other writings is probably as ancient as literature itself. Such
writing usually expresses a timeless human sense of wonderment about the beauty or awesomeness of
nature; it also reflects a sense of the human relationship with the natural world at a particular time and
place. The pastoral ideal may have colored the dreams of some early Americans, but it was inappropriate
for the American landscape. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, American writers and painters began
to reject this pastoral ideal and turn to untamed nature for inspiration [see Document 22], and by the mid-
eighteenth century the romantic appreciation of wilderness had become a dominant influence in American art
and literature [see Document 34].Beneath the shade which beechen boughs diffuse,
You, Tityrus, entertain your silvan muse.
Round the wide world in banishment we roam,
Forc’d from our pleasing fields and native home;
While, stretch’d at ease, you sing your happy loves,
And Amaryllis fills the shady groves.***O fortunate old man! Whose farm remains—
For you sufficient—and requites your pains;
Though rushes overspread the neighbouring
plains,
Though here the marshy grounds approach your
fields,
And there the soil a stony harvest yields.
Your teeming ewes shall no strange meadows try,Nor fear a rot from tainted company.
Behold! yon bordering fence of sallow trees
Is fraught with flowers, the flowers are fraught
with bees:
The busy bees, with a soft murmuring strain,
Invite to gentle sleep the labouring swain.
While, from neighbouring rock, with rural
songs,
The pruner's voice the pleasing dream prolongs,
Stock-doves and turtles tell their amorous pain,
And, from the lofty elms, of love complain.Source: Virgil, “Pastoral I,” in Dryden's Version of Virgil's
Pastorals and Georgics; and the First Volume of Aeneis;
Vol. 10 of The Works of the Greek and Roman Poets,
Translated into English (London: Suttaby, Evance and Fox,
1813), pp. 37, 39-40.