V--2nd, half-way

[alice wellintown]

I would suggest Emerson's Nature, but ...that is obvious enough.

from Nature

 But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that
come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he
touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this
design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of
the sublime.  Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If
the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men
believe and adore;  and preserve for many generations the remembrance
of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out
these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing
smile.

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present,
they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred
impression, when the mind is open to their influence.  Nature never
wears a mean appearance.  Neither does the wisest man extort her
secret, and lose his curiosity  by finding out all her perfection.
Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals,
the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour,  as much as they
had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.

When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most
poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made
by manifold natural objects.  It is this which distinguishes the stick
of timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet. The charming
landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some
twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and
Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape.
There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye
can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.  This is the best part
of these men's farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title.

Literary Ecology and Postmodernity in Thomas Sanchez's Mile Zero and
Thomas Pynchon's Vineland
You can read it online:

Postmodern Ecology
Communication, Evolution, and Play
 Daniel R. White - Author

A Dark Romantic, Pynchon, as we see, and particularly in this chapter,
Mondaugen, doesn't,  as Melville famously said of himself, oscillate
in Emerson's Rainbow.  Like Melville, however, and like Emerson, he is
a deep and dark diver.

see Orphic Contra Gnostic.