The heartless industrialisation of the 1800’s fuelled the tree-i-cide of the century. The complex interplay between human and the natural systems have resulted in an ecosystem degradation. This environmental folly in inundating, burning and cutting vast forests were adopted from the patterns of pre-European deforestation but had spurred conservation ideas and practices. Particularly, Romantic and transcendental writers who celebrated American nature and the ‘wildness’ restorative effects on the human spirit challenged the idea that nature is predominantly a commodity to be used. Through the promotion of the scenic and aesthetic aspect of nature, civilians assimilate to the importance of the divine world to their physical and spiritual health…show more content… Hopkin then became a devout Jesuit – part of a scholarly religious congregation - who wrote about nature to reveal God’s significance through the wonder of creation. However, residing in an area that was under industrial development, Hopkin’s began to doubt nature’s ability to withstand human destruction, dismayed to discover at how far the city had fallen from its Georgian elegance. This annihilation of the swathes of countryside during the Industrial revolution served as a sacrilege, an affront to his…show more content… His sustained employment of internal rhyme and compound adjectives provides the certain urgency of the poem, effectively conveying the sorrow and shock over the obliteration of nature. The monosyllabic line “Felled, felled, are all felled’ can be identified as spondaic – where every syllable is stressed. This metrical unit is successful in portraying his distress at such wanton destruction. It is also emphasised by the heavy recurrence of these accented words ‘felled’ that strike the ear similar to blows of an ax on the tree trunks. Through his use of the word ‘rank’ Hopkin compares the Poplar trees to a line of soldiers that are summarily executed, which is also reinforced by the use of personification in the following line: ‘Not spared, not
