The speaker begins by introducing the water lily as a stage for the activity that goes on around it. He describes “a green level of lily leaves” that “reefs the petal’s chamber and paves the flies’ furious arena,”--a cover for the activity below and the ground for the action above. The picture establishes the speaker’s view of nature as a complex body with layers that reach beyond its seemingly inactive surface. The language used by the speaker to describe the lily leaves, marked by alliteration and subtle imagery, also demonstrates the speaker’s appreciation of the beauty of nature’s “outer surface,” the face it shows most plainly to the casual observer. The speaker also personifies nature by describing it as a “lady” with “two minds,” clearly those that exist above and below its surface. Study these, the speaker notes to himself, and only then can one develop an accurate understanding of the heart of nature.…
Thomas has a very distinctive eye for the miniature of nature, often overlooked by others. Explore his appreciation of the natural world in the poem ‘But These Things Also.’…
Imagine a place with giant trees, tall bluffs overlooking the ocean, and green water lapping on the rocks below. The wind is cool and moist, the aroma of sea foam and grass fill the air, and water as far as the eye can see. Imagine this place and you have the Pacific Northwest, the home of Chief Dan George and the setting for his poem “The Beauty of the Trees. “ Chief Dan George was a leader of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, a band of the Salish Indians located near coastal Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He was an Indian Chief, actor, writer, and poet. “The Beauty of the Trees,” one of his most famous poems, has an underlying theme that the simple things in nature should be appreciated. The title of the poem suggests the poem will be about trees or the forest; however, it is about more than that. George presents a speaker who emphasizes the connection between him and nature, and he wants the reader to feel the same passion he does. The reader imagines a simple life, a man cooking fresh salmon over a fire as the sun sets with the trees whispering in the distance. In the final verse, the line “and the life that never goes away, they speak to me” (lines 16 and 17) the reader connects nature and the speaker to the circle of life and knows it will all happen tomorrow as nature is reliable. The last line “and my heart soars” (line 18) implies the speaker is content with life because nature is beautiful, connected to his heart, and will be the same…
The third stanza creates a hint of competition as nature is trying to match the perfection and beauty of the animals, “To match them, the landscape flowers, Outdoing, desperately Outdoing what is required”. The idea…
The poem follows the narrator’s internal monologue as he revisits a place of nostalgia that ignited his love of nature. His fears that the picturesque scene of his childhood has been idealized are quieted as he sees the place for the first time in five years, falling in love with the environment all over again. He even credits nature as “The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,/The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul/Of all my moral being” (Wordsworth LL. 109-111). His ecological thinking recharges his soul and makes him feel joyful about life once again. Nature also connects the narrator to his sister, who he sees himself in because of their love of the countryside. He acknowledges his sister the first time in the poem as his “dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch/The language of my former heart, and read/My former pleasures in the shooting lights/Of thy wild eyes” (Wordsworth LL.…
The poem begins with the narrator telling herself, “A few more steps, old feet.” (line 1). The old feet she refers to are the ancestor’s feet, that appear to be old and worn out from the rigorous journey they take. The speaker then goes on to say, “In pale tea I’ll see / me with her, tasting wild grapes” (lines 4-5). This shows her reminder of her ancestors in nature. The pale tea is the symbol of the clean, clear simplicity of nature and when the speaker simplifies herself, to the bare nothingness of nature it reveals to her, her ancestors. Then in the following lines, “at dawn, tasting dew / on tender leaves, another year.” (lines 6-7). The dawn represents a new day, a new start where she can again acknowledge her heritage. After, the speaker says, “her hands still guiding me, / at sunset grinding seeds” (lines 11-12). These hands guiding the speaker, are her ancestors leading her through their stories and nature around…
This is a brief section of the book that really goes into the detail of what the landscape looks like. It is an intense description of how desolate the landscape really is. It talks about charcoal trees as if they had been sketched across the land. This excerpt from the book is a great example of imagery and how it lets the mind depict how the landscape looks.…
Now days, it is hard to connect or be with the nature, especially if you live in a city. While there are people that interact with the nature every day because of their rural location. The short poem “Traveling through the Dark” by William Stafford, is about a person that encounter a dead deer in the road in the middle of the night. In the story, the narrator have to decide if he would save the unborn deer or just throw the mom deer to the river to save other people that might suffer an accident by encountering the dead body. In the poem, is interesting to see how the narrator, which represent the human world, makes a connection with the natural world by encountering the deer and debating if he/she should do something for the baby deer. Interestingly enough, Stafford give a clear description of the setting, location and time where this is occurring when he mentions, “Traveling through the dark I found a deer dead on the edge…
On our field-trip, we passed through many famous historical places, including Bunker Hill. Bunker Hill is significant due to the battle that occurred there on June 17 1775. It was one of the first battles to be in the Revolutionary War. Bunker Hill’s battle brought up many new leaders, such as Colonel William Prescott, and stirred up the legacy of The Battle of Bunker Hill.…
What are the effects of low production on farmers in the community of top hill St. Thomas?…
The playful boy in Birches is imaginary, he represents a younger version of Frost himself. The boy enjoyed swinging on the trees by “riding them over and over again / until he took the stiffness out of them”(30-31). This visual image illustrates the victory of the poet in moving to his own imaginary world where “you’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen”(13). In a study guide on Birches, it is claimed that “this line (13) signals the beginning of a retreat from reality” (Poetry for Students, Vol. 13). In addition, comparing the birches in the ice storm to “girls on hands and knees that throw their hair” (19) symbolizes the captive position of the speaker who is getting older as the Birches, year after year. Even though the poet feels free when he is a swinger of birches, he reached a statement that “Earth is the right place for love” (53); climbing the trees and knowing about coming back again is an example of escape and transcendence towards heaven. Identically, the speaker in “Stopping by Woods”, is watching “the woods fill up with snow” (4), the “frozen lake” (7) in an unfamiliar location. With a feeling of sadness, he wants to keep on contemplating the nature but many objects prevents him to do so; the farmhouse in the village where he belongs and the confused little horse. In fact, the speaker concluded in that wintery location that his horse must thought it was strange to stop there, so the animal shake his harness bells. Frost, in this image creates an auditory imagery to explain the soothing silence that made the speaker fleetingly forget about his…
In the Prose Passage, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s attitude towards nature is very obvious. He illustrates to the reader that he not only enjoys nature, but he is charmed and connected to it. In this passage, he also explores the differences between how adults see nature and how children see nature. Finally, he reiterates his delight and connection to nature in saying, “Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight does not reside in nature, but in man, or in a harmony of both.” Ralph Waldo Emerson was not only an enthusiastic writer of nature, but an enjoyer of its magnificent features as well.”…
The use of imagination brings a child's perspective of the garden to a level in which everything is brought to life in and around the backyard. The child's perspective makes simple items show great symbolism such as the washing line which lifts the persona to an "exalter position, almost sky high". The washing line is also personified with "sliver skeletal arms" and is "best climbing tree" which metaphorically describes the washing line. Sustained metaphors like "pegs adorning its trunk" are used to further show the responder the comparison between the washing line and a tree. The use of similes enables the responder to be able to take part in the poem and see things in the eyes of an imaginative child, a child who finds a simple backyard, where clothes can be hung like "coloured flags in a secret code", mystifying and amusing.…
The Americans, also led by Maj. Gen. Israel Putnam along with Prescott, knew what they were doing. With the British’s intent revealed, Putnam and Prescott exercised disciplined initiative, and forced the “British to fight on ground the Americans chose” (Kurtz, pg. 612).…
• I should like to hear him fly with the high fields/ And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land. -Dylan Thomas, “Fern Hill”…