Boey Kim Cheng's "Report to Wordsworth" is a cry of despair over environmental crisis. The poem's speaker looks back to William Wordsworth, the great Romantic poet who argued that nature was the best teacher, and wishes he were here to guide humanity now. A total lack of Romantic reverence for nature, this speaker feels, is a big part of how humanity has ended up with the dying and polluted world it lives in today. Boey first published this poem in his 2004 collection Another Place.

• Read the full text of “Report to Wordsworth”

• “Report to Wordsworth” Summary

• “Report to Wordsworth” Themes

  • 

    Humanity's Destruction of Nature

    Where this theme appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-14
  • 

    Poetry, Enchantment, and Conservation

    Where this theme appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-2
    • Lines 5-11

• Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Report to Wordsworth”

  • Lines 1-4

    You should be ...
    ... a dying clock.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 5-10

    All hopes of ...
    ... for the kill.

    

    

    

    

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  • Lines 11-14

    Poetry and piety ...
    ... his last cry.

    

    

    

    

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• “Report to Wordsworth” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

  • Apostrophe

    

    

    

    

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    Where apostrophe appears in the poem:

    • Line 1: “You should be here, Nature has need of you.”

  • Allusion

    

    

    

    

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    Where allusion appears in the poem:

    • Line 1: “You should be here, Nature has need of you.”
    • Lines 5-8: “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,”
    • Line 12: “Nature's mighty heart is lying still”

  • Personification

    

    

    

    

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    Where personification appears in the poem:

    • Lines 1-2: “Nature has need of you. / She has been laid waste”
    • Lines 2-3: “Smothered by the smog, / the flowers are mute”
    • Line 12: “Nature's mighty heart is lying still”
    • Line 13: “O see the wound widening in the sky”

  • Simile

    

    

    

    

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    Where simile appears in the poem:

    • Line 4: “a sky slowing like a dying clock”
    • Line 9: “Neptune lies helpless as a beached whale”

  • Alliteration

    

    

    

    

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    Where alliteration appears in the poem:

    • Line 1: “Nature,” “need”
    • Line 2: “Smothered,” “smog”
    • Line 4: “sky slowing”
    • Line 5: “sea”
    • Line 6: “sunk”
    • Line 7: “free”
    • Line 8: “famous”
    • Lines 9-10: “whale, / while”
    • Line 10: “man moves”
    • Line 11: “Poetry,” “piety”
    • Line 13: “wound widening”

• “Report to Wordsworth” Vocabulary

  Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

  • Laid waste
  • Mute
  • Proteus
  • Entombed
  • Triton
  • Neptune
  • Insatiate
  • Piety
  • Labouring
  • Utter
  • (Location in poem: Line 2: “She has been laid waste.”)

• Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Report to Wordsworth”

  • Form

  • Meter

  • Rhyme Scheme

• “Report to Wordsworth” Speaker

• “Report to Wordsworth” Setting

• Literary and Historical Context of “Report to Wordsworth”

• More “Report to Wordsworth” Resources

  • External Resources

    • Boey Aloud — Listen to Boey discussing and performing some of his poetry.

    • A Brief Biography — Learn more about Boey's life and work via Poetry International.

    • An Interview with Boey — Read an interview in which Boey discusses his poetic career.

  • LitCharts on Other Poems by Kim Cheng Boey

    • The Planners

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