This paper compares and contrast how
nature is portrayed in a variety of literary works. The works included in this paper
are Elizabeth Bishop's "The Fish," Ralph Waldo Emerson's "
Nature," Oliver Wendell Holmes's "The Chambered Nautilus," and Patrick Meyer's "K2," Jack London's "To Build A Fire," Henry David Thoreau's "Walden, Or Life in the Woods" and William Wordsworth''s "The World is Too Much With Us." Some of the
topics discussed include cruelty in nature, man's relationship with nature, the different elements of nature, the Romantic and Transcendentalist view of nature and the true communing of individual soul with nature. The paper concludes with the author tying all of these topics together by illustrating the similarities between human nature and nature itself.