One of the main sources of inspiration for artists is the beauty of nature and its relationship with mankind. The poems "The World is Too Much with Us" by William Wordsworth, "The Widow's Lament in Springtime" by William Carlos Williams, and "A Narrow Fellow in the Grass" by Emily Dickinson, discuss this theme using different types of imagery, metaphors, contrasts and comparisons.
First, nature is portrayed in these poems as a living entity. There is a sense of motion through imagery. Dickinson describes how the snake "closes at your feet and opens further on" and "Unbraiding in the sun." This description of the snake untangling itself in the sun gives us the feeling of movement in a warm setting and how the sun contracts with the snake. Wordsworth implies movement by using an auditory imagery of the wind: "The winds that will be howling at all hours", which is also a simile to a howling animal. Williams, on the other hand, uses a kinesthetic imagery describing sorrow as "grass flames," which reminds us of the living fire that can provide us warmth, but also burn. Therefore, nature is not just "a place we live in," but it has a life, it moves.
In addition, nature is constantly compared to humanity's mundane life in order to prove the readers that man is an integral part of nature and that it is closer to us than we think it is. Dickinson is using the comb we all apply to brush our hair to picture the snake's movement in the grass: "The grass divides as with a comb." Also, she personificates the snake by referring to it as "nature's people." Wordsworth depicts the beautiful image of a mother breastfeeding her child or an erotic picture of a man and a woman through the relationship between the sea and the moon at night: "The sea that bares her bosom to the moon." The speaker in "The Widow's Lament in Springtime" describes the plum tree "with masses of flowers." Choosing the word "masses" to describe flowers is a bit odd, but it implies the heavy grief and sorrow in which the speaker immersed.
