The Relationship Between Man and Nature

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The Relationship Between Man and Nature

In this piece of coursework, I'm going to discover the relation ship

between man and nature, using two poets' works.

The poets I am studying are Robert Frost and R. S. Thomas. The works I

have chosen by Robert Frost are Mending Wall, Two Look At Two, After

Apple-Picking, and Mowing. I will study Mowing and Mending Wall in

more detail.

The works I have chosen to study by R. S. Thomas are Lore, Farm Child,

The Evacuee, and Cynddlan On A Tractor. I will be studying Lore and

The Evacuee in more detail.

Mowing - Robert Frost.

This poem is, as the title suggests, about mowing. It's one man out in

the fields mowing with his scythe and his imagination running away

with him, making him think that his scythe was whispering.

"What was it it whispered? I know not my self.

…The silence, which was why it whispered and did not speak." It's

silent in the fields, only a bird or two, maybe, to keep him company.

It's so silent, his mind makes him think that there is something else

there; he's basically going mad from the silence.

He personifies the scythe, saying that it 'whispered'. You and I both

know that that scythe, that any scythe, is an inanimate object, it

can't talk. His imagination runs away with him.

The language used in this poem is rather more formal than you would

hear in normal language. Could you imagine saying, 'what was it

he/she/it/they whispered? I know not myself.'? You would think, if

anyone said that now, that they were mad. You don't hear people saying

things like that, except in Shakespeare. Which is probably where Mr.

Frost got a lot of his ideas from, as it sounds like the kind of thing

that Shakespeare would say.

The ideas are very fanciful, a scythe whispering? Not an everyday

topic, is it? He is very imaginative, and can be compared to William

Wordsworth. Wordsworth also had very fanciful and imaginative ideas.

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