The speaker of this poem is a lyrical I, as you can see in line 11 where the poet uses the first person: “So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,” and also in line 12 where he talks about “me”. But the speaker also mentions a certain “us” with which he refers to us people. We, the human beings, are also the addressee’s in this poem. The lyrical I explains to us that we, including himself, do not appreciate nature as much as we should be and we do not think that it is special. It is hard to tell where the speaker is at the moment of expressing his opinion. But he mentions a sea and wind, which might also mean that the lyrical I is outside at the sea, where it is windy and already night, because “the Sea…bares her bosom to the moon;”. (see line 5) But it could also be that this is just a metaphor that came to his mind and it does not have to do anything with the place he is at the moment of speaking.
This poem was written by the English poet, William Wordsworth, in the beginning of the 19th century. Since that was the time when the industrial revolution took place, I think it must have had a big impact on Wordsworth’s poem. Maybe it was even the initial point for him to write this poem. The two main topics in his sonnet are the importance of nature and religion or God. He expresses his opinion about us being affected by materialism which makes us unable of appreciating nature that was a gift from God. We just forget about the little, meaningful things in life.
To be able to understand this poem better, I am going to analyze the content of this