Values of Wilderness

"Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs, -
To the silent wilderness,
Where the soul need not repress
Its music."

Percy Bysshe Shelley
"The Invitation," 1820,
in English Poetry II: from Collins to Fitzgerald,
edited by Charles W. Elliot

petrified wood tumbles out of a bentonite clay hill, Photo by T. Scott Williams/NPS