The three poems "Afterwards" by Thomas Hardy, "Rising Five" by Norman Nicholson, and "The Wild Swans at Coole" by W.B. Yeats all use vivid nature imagery, ranging from swans to seasons, to enhance their central ideas and contrast it to humanity.

"Afterwards" uses several aspects of nature to emphasise the grandeur of ordinary things and how the poet noticed such things but questioned if people would remember him for this after his death. Hardy describes the season of spring as being "delicate-filmed as new spun silk" giving a precise description of the beauty of spring by comparing it to a shiny new fabric, with connotations of value and exquisiteness. By stanza four the poem has gradually moved from spring to the "full-starred heavens that winter sees" using personification to link winter to the fact that he has "been stilled at last" as winter is a symbol of...