The following is from a chapter called “the education of our girls” and the author encourages a liberal education for all. Here the recommendation is to learn from nature the skills only a sensitive heart can acquire. I interpret this to mean that the soft and subtle as well as the turbulent motions of nature will be drawn into the spirit of the person that “shall lean her ear in many a secret place.” Learning the laws and impulses nature has to teach.

 “Nature,” begins by observing a three-year-old child whom she decides to choose for a student.

“Three years she grew in sun and shower;

Then nature said, ‘A lovelier flower

On earth was never sown;

This child I to myself will take,

She shall be mine, and I will make

A lady of my own.

“Myself will to my darling be

Both law and impulse; and with me

The girl, in rock and plain,

In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,

Shall feel an overseeing power

To kindle or restrain.

“She shall be sportive as the fawn

That wild with glee across the lawn

Or up the mountain springs;

And hers shall be the breathing balm,

And hers the silence and the calm,

Of mute insensate things.

“The floating clouds their state shall lend

to her; for her the willow bend;

Nor shall she fail to see

E’en in the motions of the storm

Grace that shall mold the maiden’s form

By silent sympathy.

“The stars of midnight shall be dear

to her; and she shall lean her ear

In many a secret place,

Where rivulets dance their wayward round,

And beauty born of murmuring sound

Shall pass into her face.’”

I can't recall ever reading a more lovely bouquet of thought.

 From Our Home, by Charles E. Sargent, M.A.,