English lit - report to Wordsworth

this is a poem lamenting to another

“you should be here, nature has need of you.”

“you” = Wordsworth

epanadiplosis

“nature” = is perfectly in the middle

needs protection

“need” = urgency

“.” drives the point

“she has been laid waist”

left to die —> not cared for

“she” = Mother Nature

“smothered by the smog”

suffocated and chocked by the smog

thick gas

“flowers are mute”

personifies

dying

colour has faded

“birds are few”

unusual

usually in big flocks

“sky slowing”

personifies

clouds move, smog doesn’t

“a dying clock”

apocalyptic

predicting its downfall

running out of time

doomsday clock

“all hopes of proteus rising from the sea have sunk”

“Proteus” = greek/roman sea god

hopes of the sea being clean are lost

hope of help is lost as we lose the gods to pollution

“Tritons notes struggle to be free”

nature is trapped and so is his music

sea god

“his famous horns are chocked, his eyes are dazed”

greed

“chocked” by plastic

unconscious

“Neptune lies helpless as beached as a whale”

a gas giant —> smog

whales need water

its our fault —> noises, temperature, tides, boats

“insatiate man moves in for the kill”

man is impossible to satisfy —> greed

they want everything —> greed

planned?

“petty and piety have begun to fail”

Wordsworths poetry is failing

were destroying gods work

people aren’t religious anymore

“as natures mighty heart is lying still”

nature is dead

“O see the widening in the sky”

plea

dispare

ironic that humans kill themselves and their planet

going to heaven

“god is labouring to utter his last cry”

one sin is greed

working hard for evermore

trying to restore the world but can’t

working till he dies —> god in immortal —> can’t die physically but can die mentally

gods are helpless —> supposed to be very powerful

structure and form

lack of stanzas

its a sonnet

—> popular at the time

—> regimented —> what we’re doing to nature

—> what Wordsworth writes

semantic feild

first line is epanadiplosis (starts and ends with the same line) —> emphasises the direct address

context

Wordsworth was a romantic poet —> brought nature to the front saying its most important

has intersexual references to wordsworths work

—> composed upon Westminster bridge

—> daffodils

—> the world is too much with us