Caitlin Nelson - Outside Reading

The Poplar Field

The poplars are fell'd, farewell to the shade
And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade:
The winds play no longer and sing in the leaves,
Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives.

Twelve years have elapsed since I first took a view 5
Of my favourite field, and the bank where they grew:
And now in the grass behold they are laid,
And the tree is my seat that once lent me a shade.

The blackbird has fled to another retreat
Where the hazels afford him a screen from the heat; 10
And the scene where his melody charm'd me before
Resounds with his sweet-flowing ditty no more.

My fugitive years are all hasting away,
And I must ere long lie as lowly as they,
With a turf on my breast and a stone at my head, 15
Ere another such grove shall arise in its stead.

'Tis a sight to engage me, if anything can,
To muse on the perishing pleasures of man;
Short-lived as we are, our enjoyments, I see,
Have a still shorter date, and die sooner than we.
~William Cowper

This a poem by William Cowper that I read when I was in the tenth grade, and it has been one of my favorites ever since. When I read those verses, I feel as if Cowper gets to the heart of man's faults. He talks about this beautiful field of trees that he once loved, simply for what it was. It was a retreat for him, but then man decided to cut the trees down. Cowper goes back and to his dismay the trees are gone. All that is left are stumps of the trees that he once enjoyed so readily. And yet, even though man cut the trees down for whatever reason it was, he is still unsatisfied. Man has this insatiable hunger to continue to create, to mold nature into what it "should" be. Our happiness is so short lived. It's like buying new clothes or a new book or whatever, it's exciting at first and we can't imagine wanting something else. But a few days later the purchase is old, its not exciting anymore because its used and we are too familiar with it. People have seen it already, and thus starts the process again. Of having to buy something else new, to regain that temporary feeling of happiness and contentedness that we want to feel so badly. But it won't last, it never lasts. Not when we place it in material things, or things that we are in charge of. Man is thirsting for more, and we search in all of the wrong places and do all of the wrong things. Until we realize that, until we realize that joy, the kind that doesn't fade, is found in spirituality, in God, or some outlet of that form, we will just continue to seek and destroy looking to fill up a gap within ourselves that won't be filled by anything created by our own hands.