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Report To Wordsworth

In 'Report to Wordsworth,' Boey Kim Cheng explores the theme of environmental degradation through vivid imagery and personification of Nature, highlighting humanity's detrimental impact on the environment. The poem reflects broader concerns about the disconnection between humanity and nature, illustrating the consequences of pollution and neglect. Cheng's lamentation serves as a call to recognize and address the urgent state of the natural world.

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978 views1 page

Report To Wordsworth

In 'Report to Wordsworth,' Boey Kim Cheng explores the theme of environmental degradation through vivid imagery and personification of Nature, highlighting humanity's detrimental impact on the environment. The poem reflects broader concerns about the disconnection between humanity and nature, illustrating the consequences of pollution and neglect. Cheng's lamentation serves as a call to recognize and address the urgent state of the natural world.

Uploaded by

neilmehra09
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Discuss how Boey Kim Cheng employs the theme of environmental degradation and its consequences in

"Report to Wordsworth," and how this theme reflects broader concerns about humanity's relationship
with nature in the modern world.

You should be here, Nature has need of you.


She has been laid waste. Smothered by the smog,
the flowers are mute, and the birds are few
in a sky slowing like a dying clock.
All hopes of Proteus rising from the sea
have sunk; he is entombed in the waste
we dump. Triton’s notes struggle to be free,
his famous horns are choked, his eyes are dazed,
and Neptune lies helpless as beached as a whale,
while insatiate man moves in for the kill.
Poetry and piety have begun to fail,
As Nature’s mighty heart is lying still.
O see the widening in the sky,
God is labouring to utter his last cry.

The poem ‘Report to Wordsworth’ by Boey Kim Cheng is a complaint to William Wordsworth, an 18 th
century English romantic poet. The poem talks much about the abysmal state of the environment,
specifically how man has diminished its beauty and power. Boey Kim Cheng highlights this degradation
of the environment using metaphorical language, classical allusion, and vivid visual imagery. However, it
is his personification of Nature, that reflects the broader concerns of the instances of environmental
degradation.

Boey Kim Cheng gives specific instances of pollution and the corruption of nature to give the reader
snippets of the larger picture.

-Smothered by smog, flowers mute, birds few, beached whale

In the beginning of the poem, it may seem as though Cheng is only giving instances of environmental
concern and damage. However, through the course of the poem, Cheng anthropomorphs Nature to give
the reader a sense of the larger issue at hand.

-Nature is in need of you, has been laid waste, God is labouring… , Nature’s mighty heart is lying still

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