The Sea

The sea symbolizes the vulnerability of nature when faced with the greed and destructiveness of modern materialism. While the speaker introduces the concept of nature in a general sense early on in the poem, it is not until the fifth line, wherein they mention the sea, that nature takes any sort of physical form. Then, in this line, the sea as a physical force of nature is not described in terms of its brute power, but rather its unguarded beauty. While “getting and spending, we lay waste our powers,” the sea “bares her bosom to the moon” (2, 5). This suggests that while the sea maintains a sense of openness and stewardship, it is constantly surrounded by the dangers and threats of human industrialism.

Paganism

Paganism in the poem symbolizes a strong connection between humanity and the natural world. While often times Paganism is associated with primitivism...