Bowles the Ecologist

The two Sonnets by William Lisle Bowles - "To the River Tweed" and "To the River Itchin, Near Winton" - strike me as taking an ecological rather than environmental take on nature. As we discussed in class on Monday, an ecological perspective calls for a change in the way we view nature. Both sonnets involve man's desertion of nature. In "To the River Tweed," this comes in the form of the shepherd, whose "distant pipe is heard no more," while in "To the River Itchin, Near Winton," the speaker references "those, who circled on thy shore,/Companions of my youth, now meet no more." This abandonment is made more impactful through the use of personification. When the speaker relates to the rivers on a personal level, he sees man’s desertion of nature very differently—nature misses us! The speaker therefore feels a sense of connection with nature—specifically the two rivers—and even privileged to experience nature in all of its glory.