Earth is home to many wonderful and exotic species, as well as our home. These species, including us, rely on their environment to find shelter and food. Unfortunately, their ecosystem is being destroyed by us. Some species are already at the risk of becoming extinct. One can wonder how far we will go and what would be the consequences of our actions. In fact, the poems “Global Warming”, “Ice Would Suffice”, “Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years from Now”, “Ruin and Beauty”, and “Some Effects of Global Warming in Lackawanna County” all have the same theme. They all describe what might happen to our species and to the earth.
Jane Hirshfield wrote a short but meaningful poem called “Global Warming”. The poem is about how humans are not able
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For instance, take the lines 7-9, “…hominids have stood/for mere years/baffled brains atop battered shoulders”. These lines suggest that humans took a brutal hit in regard to population. It also can be that the “battle shoulders” can be the environment itself. The planet is in a rough shape, and “atop” of the “battle shoulders” are humans that cannot believe that the planet is in such a state. Another example of imagery in the poem is, “In a murky blanket of heavens” (10). “Heavens” means the sky, and “murky” means gloomy and dark. In other words, the environment that the humans live in is covered in a dark and gloomy …show more content…
The first stanza begins with a daunting line, “It’s so quiet now the children have decided to stop/being born…” (1-2). This line is saying that humans have stopped producing new generations. When the last person dies humanity dies. However, lines 13-14 state, “… Already/ seedlings erupt through cement”. This is suggesting that nature will blossom and survive. This implies that humans cannot survive without earth, however, the earth can and will survive without humans. In regard to form, the poem is broken down into stanzas that vary in different lengths. The length variance of the stanzas can be a reference to the vegetation size change throughout humanities lifetime. The reason behind this is that the poem starts up with two long stanzas, but taper down to short ones. Afterward, the last stanza is bigger. It shows that at the beginning of humanity there was a lot of vegetation, but humans started to remove most of the plants. When the humans started to decrease in population the vegetation started to
In the poem there is also an idea of man verses nature, this relates to the survival of the fittest. John Foulcher shows this through the use of first person point of view. For example in the second stanza “Then above me the sound drops” this again possesses sensory imagery creating a deeper human aura throughout the poem. Foulcher further uses a human aura to build a sense of natural imagery for example in the last stanza : “I pick up these twigs and leave them” adding closure
Yet there are no gods in sight and the world is being destroyed. Dead leaves are the koan in this poem since although they are dead now new ones will replace them in a year or so. So they are both dead and alive in a sense. This leaves in this poem also bringing about a main feature of many haiku’s, which is the idea of nature.
By the end of the poem there is another shift in tone. The tone takes on a more hopeful meaning. Now, Bryant uses the spring season to compare to a new age. He mentions, “The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes/ In the full strength of years, matron, and maid,/ The bow'd with age, the infant in the smiles.”(68-70) The rebirth of human life compares to nature in the sense that when nature is reborn in springtime everything turns green. The reader ends the poem with an enlightened sense of feeling instead of the dark and gloomy feeling they felt at the beginning of the poem.
This is significant because it emphasizes the melancholy and mournfulness that he depicts with imagery in the first stanza. Later on in the second stanza, he author describes the tree the narrator would have planted as a “green sapling rising among the twisted apple boughs”. The author uses visual color imagery of the color green to describe the sapling in order to emphasize just how young the newborn was when he died. Later on in the poem, the narrator speaks of himself and his brothers kneeling in front of the newly plated tree. The fact that they are kneeling represents respect for the deceased. When the narrator mentions that the weather is cold it is a reference back to the first stanza when he says “of an old year coming to an end”. Later on in the third stanza the author writes “all that remains above earth of a first born son” which means that the deceased child has been buried. They also compare the child to the size of “a few stray atoms” to emphasize that he was an infant. All of these symbols and comparisons to are significant because they are tied to the central assertion of remembrance and honoring of the dead with the family and rebirth.
When humans and nature come together, they either coexist harmoniously because nature's inhabitants and humans share a mutual respect and understanding for each other, or they clash because humans attempt to control and force their ways of life on nature. The poems, "The Bull Moose" by Alden Nowlan, "The Panther" by Rainer Maria Rilke, "Walking the Dog" by Howard Nemerov, and "The Fish" by Elizabeth Bishop, describe what happens when humans and nature come together. I believe that when humans and nature come together they either clash and conflict because individuals destroy and attempt to control nature, which is a reflection of their powerful need to control themselves, or humans live peacefully with nature because not only do they
Because the poem is long, it won’t be quoted extensively here, but it is attached at the end of the paper for ease of reference. Instead, the paper will analyze the poetic elements in the work, stanza by stanza. First, because the poem is being read on-line, it’s not possible to say for certain that each stanza is a particular number of lines long. Each of several versions looks different on the screen; that is, there is no pattern to the number of lines in each stanza. However, the stanzas are more like paragraphs in a letter than
Imagery was also used in the poem. I found that the yellow in the first line represented that the future the writer was facing was bright and warm regardless of his choice. The undergrowth was, as undergrowth in any forest, damp and dank smelling, but not necessarily unpleasant, just something that the writer would have to face. The image of traveling through a forest also brings to mind thoughts of birds in flight, chirping and singing. Squirrels dashing through trees, rustling leaves and dropping the occasional acorn or nut also create an image of sight and sound. The sun reflecting through the trees, casting shadows and creating pockets of warm and cool air and the occasional breeze stirring through the trees are also brought to mind by this poem. The end of the poem brings to me
Then, Williams finds a way to change the depressing mood of his poem by using specific words to convey feelings of hope. He does this in his fourth stanza with the lines: “Lifeless in appearance, sluggish/dazed spring approaches” (L14-15). Williams is saying that the plants, the trees, and the vines only appear to be dead, but they are not. Once again imagery is being used here. Also, what is going to save this otherwise seemingly desolate land is the approaching spring; “sluggish” and “dazed” as it may be, it is imminent – life is forthcoming. Williams also proffers up more hope with the lines: “One by one objects are defined/rooted, they/grip down and begin to awaken” (L22,26-27).
the definition of turbid is cloudy, opaque, even muddy, which means that into his mind cloudiness moved in and out. The speaker ends stanza two by returning back to his present day on the English Channel. "Find also in the sound a thought, hearing it you this distant northern sea" were the last two lines meaning that the speaker and his compliant discovered thoughts at the sound of waves from the sea of the English Channel. Stanza three is started with the statement that the sea of faith was also full like the ocean's tide along the English Channel. the speaker compares the sea of faith lays to a beautiful belt using the words "furled" and "bright girdle."
In the poem, the contrast of hard negative connotations and soft sensitive words indicates his purpose of writing. Examples of soft words are “gently its touch, rouse, kind old sun, whispering, full-nerved, still warm” Examples of hard words are “snow, clays of a cold star, clay grew tall, fatuous sunbeams, break earth’s sleep at all”. The word clay reminds us that we came from clay and we return to dust. The choice of cold star probably refers to earth before it was inhabited which was also expressed in the bible “thou hast made me of clay and wilt thou bring me unto dust again”. The word fatuous shows the anger and frustration of the writer. Whispering has the feeling of anxiety and dread. The last line is an old existential question of “why are we here?” With the use of sound effects, themes, technique and language, the poem clearly shows the genuine emotions of empathy, waste and the futility of
The poem begins with the poet noticing the beauty around her, the fall colors as the sun sets “Their leaves and fruits seemed painted, but was true, / Of green, of red, of yellow, mixed hue;” (5-6). The poet immediately relates the effects of nature’s beauty to her own spiritual beliefs. She wonders that if nature here on Earth is so magnificent, then Heaven must be more wonderful than ever imagined. She then views a stately oak tree and
In the first stanza of the poem, he says “A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;” In this instance, simple concepts easily known in nature are used to help understand something else entirely. Throughout the poem, he continues to reference grass and different qualities of it. The underlying message of the poem as a whole is how democracy has been reborn in America. Transcendentalists also use nature in their pieces.
as a part of the season which is known as spring; it can be assumed he means all life and all things are subject to the ravages of time. Mortality is all around us and with it the stages of all life and time pass. In terms of the opening lines, thought, youth and beauty are fleeting indeed.
The scale and pace of change is dramatic; for example, the extinction of species is occurring at around 100-fold pre-human rates4. The population sizes of vertebrate species have, on average, declined by half over the last 45 years5. More than 2.3 million km2 of primary forest has been felled since 20006. About
The health of the earth degrades with the destructive activity of human beings. A recent study by a group of scientists looked at twenty four different services that the earth’s ecosystems provide for humans, ecosystem services, and found that fifteen of them are in need of desperate help (Gazette 31 March 2005). These services are vital to the survival of both human and nonhuman life and include filtering water and providing nutrient rich soils and ocean waters. Many of the members of these various ecosystems are also decreasing in numbers. In a British survey of bird populations found that in the 200 birds of Britain tracked there was about a 54% population decrease between the 1968-1971 tacking period and the 1988-1991 tacking period. In two other surveys of 254 native plant species from the same area there was a decrease of about 28% during the past 40 years. Humans are pushing the sixth mass extinction (Gazette March 19, 2004).