‘Welcome to Spring’ by John Lyly is a nature poem, but it is about human nature, and human behaviour. It is about dark human behaviour, about a rape, by a Greek King. It is describing a Greek myth about a King who raped his wife’s sister and cut out her tongue so she could not tell anyone. This is unacceptable and disgraceful behaviour for anyone’s standards, and is an example of the dark human nature. Also this poem is called a nature poem because it uses imagery of nature to describe the events of the myth. In the poem there are many references to birds and bird songs, which are natural images, which comfort us. The poem is written in 3 distinct parts. The first part is dark, and describes the events of the night, the rape. But then the poem lightens up and it has an uplifting feel to it. It is set during the day and the nights terrors have been forgotten. It is an ignorance of the night’s actions. The third and final part of the poem has the message ‘life begins all over again, same as ever’. It is about a new sexuality and lust for the new spring. The poem is essentially about human drives and desires. It is not about ‘real nature’ or the natural world. It is critical about male desire and says violence against women is not noticed or cared about. It is critical of human behaviour and is describing bad human nature, not good human nature, which is shown in ‘The Echoing Green’ by William Blake. This poem uses nature in a positive way to illustrate good human nature and behaviour. This shows humans in a much brighter way, and talks about children playing whilst old men and women watch on reminiscing on the times when they were the little children playing on the green. This shows the innocence of both children and old people and is contradictory to ‘Welcome to Spring’, which plays off the bad nature of the human race, and how we ignore serious violence. The poem is set out in 3 main parts again, but in a different order and with different meanings. The first part is the sunrise and the preparation for play. The birds “sing louder around” as in to welcome in the new day, and new life. This first verse has many references to birds and bird songs, which represent new life and new beginnings, which symbolises to the poet his childhood. The second verse is describing the poet himself, as “Old john with white hair”. He is reminiscing his childhood which is described in verse one, and remembering how he used to play the games which are now replicated by the new children of the village. The name “Echoing Green” is used to show how the village green is the centre of village life, and it is always being used, and always has been, and will continue to be for generations. The third verse represents the poet’s old age, and is sundown, the end of life, the end of the day. It represents his coming near to death, but the reader is comforted by warming images of birds again. “like birds in their nest, Are ready for rest” comforts the reader even though it is about the topic of death and the end of life. This poem is about a much lighter human nature, and is more positive about life, whereas ‘Welcome to Spring’ is about the darker side of human nature, but both poems use real nature to help describe human behaviour and emotions, but with two different opinions.
In ‘Skating’ by William Wordsworth nature is described as a living force, as Mother Nature. This poem is not about human nature, it is about real nature. This poem uses dark images to describe Mother Nature’s power and force. The poet believes that nature is a living force, that it has conscious thought, and that it is intelligent, he treats nature as a person, and instead of describing human emotions, he describes nature’s emotions and power over the human race. He works around that he believes that everything is sacred, that everything is precious. The poet presents a series of events in which he claims that Mother Nature revealed itself to him. This poem is written in a much more realistic style as it does not symbolise other events, it is describing itself in a more truthful way to the other poems. It’s like an autobiography of the poet, and his experiences of nature. There are three main images in this poem, light, dark and sound, which all are describing Mother Nature as a person, not as a thing. Light and sound are created by Mother Nature in this poem, and this creates the feeling of Mother Nature as a person, as if is alive. This is supposed to give the reader a sense of how powerful Mother Nature can be, and how she controls over all of us, we can not contain her. This poem is describing how Mother Nature can be seen as a person, and a mother, who looks after her children in the world with all the power she has, and when she reveals herself she is trying to protect her child, the world in this case. The poem was written to express how William Wordsworth felt about Mother Nature, as he spent much of his childhood with nature and his ‘mother’ who looked after him, just as she looked after everything else. The poet is using this as a way to show the world a force that he feels a special relationship with, and he almost feels as if Mother Nature is his own mother.
All these poems and their poets use different styles of symbols and imagery to illustrate nature, in human nature and real nature form, and are written to express emotions the poet has.
