Pope's poem is primarily concerned with representing the sense of harmony that he himself had experienced with the natural world. The variant features of Pope's landscape - the `hills and vales' and `earth and water' are united in striving towards some greater object of unity. As Pope qualifies - `Not chaos-like together crushed and bruised/ But as the world, harmoniously confused.' (Lines 13-14, p21). These lines present an effective contrast to Swift's description of the effects of rain in the city - where the natural world brings disorder, dirt, and strife to the inhabitants: where `swelling kennels flow/ And bear their Trophies with them as they go.' Indeed, Swift's representation of city life creates a quite vulnerable picture - where the `heavy din' of rainfall inspires fear and terror to those listening to the rain on the roof from within their shelter. The `beau' who is `boxed in a chair' is perhaps a metaphorical intention on the part of Swift to exemplify the vulnerability of mankind in the context of the forces of nature, where the lone human being sits trapped within a box of his own creation with only the only liberty remaining being to listen - and not even see - the destructive weather without. As William Hazlitt wrote of this poem and of `Description of the Morning in London'': `here is not only a dry humour, an exquisite tone of irony, in these productions of his pen; but there is a touching, unpretending pathos, mixed up with the most whimsical and eccentric strokes of pleasantry and satire.' (Williams, 1995: p.327).
Pope, however, did not receive such favourable criticism for his work on the countryside. John Dennis launched further criticism of `Windsor-Forest' in his comment that `Half the Poem of Windsor Forest has nothing in it, that is peculiar to Windsor Forest. The Objects that are presented to the Reader in this latter Poem, are for the most part trivial and trifling, as Hunting, Fishing, Setting, Shooting, and a thousand common Landskips.' (Barnard, 1995: 89). However, these activities are necessary in order to create a picture of typical country life. In Swift's poem too it is the everyday boundaries and habits of society which are of interest, as they are suddenly forgotten - `triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs/ Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs'- when, in fear of getting wet and cold, people who would not usually do so, huddle together in shelter. Interestingly, this theme of mixing otherwise different groups is a theme of Pope's, where he suggests that in Nature, `tho' all things differ, all agree':
Here waving groves a checquer'd scene display,
And part admit, and part exclude the day;
As some coy nymph her lover's warm address
Nor quite indulges, nor can quite repress. [Lines 17-20. p21]
In Pope's poem there exists important oscillation between not being quite one state, and not yet another. This is perhaps representative of the transitional political and social climate. Moreover, industrialisation caused mankind's affinity with the landscape to be tested by the new impulse to develop mechanisation, which had polluting and scarring consequences for the countryside. Thus, the countryside cannot fully `indulge' the presence of man, and neither `quite repress' it. In `Windsor Forest' Pope presents a greater versatility in the countryside than Swift does in his representation of the city- one that does not depend upon commerce or social exchanges:
Ev'n the wild heath displays her purple dyes,
And 'midst the desart fruitful fields arise,
That crown'd with tufted trees and springing corn,
Like verdant isles the sable waste adorn.
Let India boast her plants, nor envy we
The weeping amber or the balmy tree, (Lines 25-30, p21)
In Swift's city, a typical day can suddenly be brought to a halt by a change in the weather, whereas in Pope's countryside there exists a form of continuity between the character of the countryside and the activities of human life within it. However, Pope makes it clear that this phenomenon is only something that has occurred since mankind became civilised:
Not thus the land appeared in ages past,
A dreary desert and a gloomy waste,
To savage beasts and savage laws a prey,
And kings more furious and severe than they;
Who claimed the skies, dispeopled air and floods,
The lonely lords of empty wilds and woods:
Cities laid waste, they stormed the dens and caves (Lines 43-49. p21)
Before the dawn of the Enlightenment in the mid seventeenth century, the landscape was harsh and `severe', where without ordered society `cities laid waste' and lords ruled over `empty wilds and woods.' Pope's use of language points to ancient existence being chaotic and disjointed; the antithesis to the line at the beginning of the poem - `Not chaos-like together crushed and bruised.' In this respect, Pope is suggesting that it is only through man's pursuit of knowledge and spiritual realisation that a contemporary balance between man and nature can be achieved. A further example of Pope's interest in this form of balance can be seen in his verse `Ode on Solitude', where he writes: `Happy the man whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air in his own ground.' (Online Poetry Archive). In `Windsor Forest' pope repeats this incantation in the following lines: `Happy the man whom this bright Court approves/ His Sov'reign favours, and his Country loves.[..] Whom humbler joys of home-felt quiet please/ Successive study, exercise, and ease.' (Lines 233-8). Harvey (2006, p.357) identifies this idea of localising human experience to the immediate vicinity of a `few acres' and `retiring' from society as `a favourite theme of English writers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries', and states that it came as a reaction to the need to `escape from the bustle and back-stabbing of court or city life' where a `more solid satisfaction of life in the countryside, on a small, self-sufficient country estate with only books and a few select friends for company' (Ibid) became increasingly more appealing to poets such as Pope. Literary critic Claudia Thomas Kairoff (2005) explains that this interest, was for Pope, a way of exploring how to develop good human virtues - that in the later years he came to believe that retreat was the only way to nurture such virtue. Kairoff argues that major critics of Pope's work such as Kelsall and Landry `overlook the degree to which Pope's poems frequently break with conventional assumptions of the rural superiority they apparently celebrate.' Instead, argues Kairoff, Pope's poetry promoted a `new, professional, non-landed perspective on the country-city ethic,' whereby he focussed on the identity of the self amidst a changing world (Kairoff, 2005: p.15).
Further to this, Pope experiments in how history can inform an imaginative understanding of the past. He embarks upon an imaginative journey through the ages, recounting a series of historical events which enabled society to form and prosper. From the time of the Greeks to Rufus in the forests of Dorset, Pope identifies the changing nature of man's relationship with the countryside, often highlighting the indifference of the landscape: `Lo Rufus, tugging at the deadly dart/ Bleeds in the forest, like a wounded hart.' (Lines 83-4). In contrast, Swift's portrayal of city life is not historically informed. Rather, the activities within the city are centred around the self and what happens in the immediate vicinity. For example, when the rain threatens the `devoted town. / To shops in crowds the daggled females fly,/ Pretend to cheapen Goods, but nothing buy.' There is a pervading sense that people in the city try to continue in their courses of action, as if nothing is out of the ordinary; they are unwilling to recognise the ominous threat of the rain and do not wish to reveal their emotions to one another. For example, the seamstress, well-dressed and `tucked-up' reveals only her `haste' to escape the rain. There is a definite sense that a man alone in the country has less to fear than a man alone in the city. It is perhaps human nature itself that is the most fearsome, rather than the storm. For Swift's depiction of what he calls a `shower' in the title is more aptly described as a storm or flood. This might be a more subtle reference to less known unconscious forces in man's psyche - and the undertone of corruption. Rain and floods symbolised a sense of spiritual retribution from a higher order of things. Swift mentions the little detail of her umbrella having `oiled sides'; another perhaps symbolic reference to the closed exterior to the personas of city-dwellers. Brendan O Hehir (1960, p.194) recognised that Swift had drawn extensively from symbolic meanings in Classical literature, most notably the floods in Georgic I which `portended the death of Caesar.' In `Windsor Forest' Pope experiments with the inversion of traditional uses of space, where `the fox obscene to gaping tombs retires/ And savage howlings fill the sacred quires. (lines 71-2). Similarly, Swift too has an interest in changing the function of city spaces, where shop doorways suddenly become impromptu places to hide from the weather.
In the corrupt city of London life operates very much in the present, where people are unwilling to reflect upon their morality, whereas Pope's poem allows space for the poet to reflect upon the long slow process of society's evolution over time. The behaviour of the people in Pope's poem is very different to the behaviour of the people in Swift's poem. Instead of being closed off to one another, Pope's depictions of man involve a more honest and open communication with nature, where `He gathers health from herbs the forest yields/ And of their fragrant physic spoils the fields/ With chymic art exalts the mineral powers/ And draws the aromatic souls of flowers' [lines 241-244]. Pope seeks to examine the root of existence that began with man learning to hunt and continued in the fanatical following of hunting sports in the eighteenth century. Within the poem exists a certain beauty in the death of a wild animal, such as the pheasant: the `flames' in its breast linking back to the beginning of the poem to Pope's reference to the `equal flame' in his own breast.
In conclusion, Swift's poem about city life is less experimental than Pope's portrayal of country life. Swift places more emphasis on the symbolism in his work, caring less for historical significance - where a `beau' in a box is still like a Greek trapped in a wooden horse because man's nature is essentially corrupt and unchanging. In contrast, Pope's message is a little brighter, if not only for his belief in `retreat' from society being a way to readdress the balance between man and nature. As critic Kathleen Williams reminds us, Swift's greatest gift was for his ability to present objects as they really existed in life `without heightening or enlarging them, and without adding any imaginary circumstances. In this way of writing Swift excelled.' (Williams. Cited in Wharton, 1995, p.209). This comment is reflected in Swift's novels which gave literature some of the earliest forms of realism. In contrast, Pope relied more upon imaginative devices to entertain his reader, where he recounts his version of historical events within the landscape in order to make vivid the changing relationship between man and nature. Both representations of city and country life did reflect pressing problems and concerns of eighteenth-century living. For example, the corruption so acutely symbolised by Swift, and Pope's interest in the threat of industrialisation. Perhaps what is most apparent is the contrast between city and country living, where in Swift's London disorder is - like the approaching storm - only a few minutes away, and in Pope's the landscape disorder used to be the natural order of things, before mankind fought to achieve some form of stability.