John Taylor Gatto

In the poem “The World is Too Much with Us”, William Wordsworth depends on his usage of imagery to display the beauty, grace, and power of nature in all of its forms. Wordsworth’s imagery personifies nature so that man is able to identify each of the elements as a character. He does so by his description of the ocean, his reflection on the wind, and his allusion to Greek gods associated with nature. The poem’s imagery begins when Wordsworth compares the ocean to a beautiful woman. When the sea…

Taoist practitioner. As stated before, the poem was written in A.D. 744, the year that Li Bai was banished from the imperial court of Emperor Xuanzong and the same year he met his great friend, Du Fu. He may have been Li Bai’s poem demonstrates culture, and exhibit an illusion of deep beauty. He expresses his freedom and an adventure with his good friend Du Fu. “His ability to create almost supernatural beauty in tiny poems made of concrete images, his whimsical Taoist sense of humor, and the…

The Hudson River school movement is a movement that depicts the landscape in the area. It uses the beauty of nature in the Hudson River Valley. The art fits 3 different themes discovery, exploration, and settlement. The art can feature the valleys, streams, and other environmental features. The paintings are highly detailed and contain a lot of contrast. All in all the paintings are a vivid detail of the surrounding environment. The painting shown above is called “Autumn Shower” by…

William Cullen Bryant was an influential Romantic poet in the 1800s. Common themes such as nature appear in many of Bryant’s poems. His poem “Thanatopsis” speaks directly to those who share a “love of Nature,” offering comfort regarding thoughts of death. Bryant’s use of structure, imagery, and selection of detail creates a unique perspective of death. Bryant opens “Thanatopsis” by vividly describing one’s relationship with nature. He creates an image of a humanlike nature by using…

W.B. Yeats’ Opinion of War W.B. Yeats was an Irish poet during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. He wrote following the belief of “spiritus mundi”, the spirit of the universe and the collective unconscious or memory, which influences him to write around different mythologies, despite being a Christian. “Spiritus Mundi” leads to two of the works that reflect his opinion regarding war and conquest. Through these two works, “Leda and the Swan” and “The Second Coming,” Yeats’ opinion of war as a…

Poetry is often written with some hidden meaning within the poems themselves, this meaning often coming in multiple layers of depth, in order to suggest or prompt an ideology, value, or action to an audience. Such cases often being seen in English Romantic Period poems and novels; these works of literature often having themes about the power and beauty of nature and how humans are just a small part of a bigger picture created by god. Though some authors take it to a step beyond such themes; an…

Another of the earliest poems of William Yeats is “To The Rose Upon the Rood of Time”, published by the poet in 1893, and has its focus on, then again, mythology and folklore as a way to convey longing for the past. The poem focuses on a narrator, presumably Yeats himself, and his detachment and dispassion for contemporary life, resulting in his nostalgic longing for the past and to be part of the Irish ancient legends – to transcend the life of the ordinary man. The red rose is used by Yeats…

In “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” by Christopher Marlowe and “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepard,” by Sir Walter Raleigh, both poets focus on the central idea of love. These poems were written in Pastoral Tradition, which celebrates the beauty of nature, and almost has a perfect setting. The details given in the first poem describe a shepherd who thinks idealistically and romantically. Whereas in the other poem, the Nymph believes realistically and disproves the belief of the perfect world…

The theme of nature is portrayed heavily in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Nature is used to show the freedom or/and exclusion in characters such as Hester, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and mostly Pearl as its symbols such as light/darkness, religion and the forest act upon them. This nineteenth century romantic novel portrays themes of Puritan religion that are contrasted profoundly with nature. Nathaniel Hawthorne uses the comparison of light and darkness to expose both the good and evil in…

The stanza derived from Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” is representative and reflective of the loss of faith in 19th century, Victorian England. In the stanza, “The Sea of Faith” a metaphor for the retreat from religious ideologies. Throughout the stanza Arnold is referring to this metaphor, as when he states that it “was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore.” I think that the poet is claiming that the religious beliefs that he and others have had were once very important to them. The…