1 Introduction

The intimacy between man and nature began with t he birth of man on the earth, and becomes closer and far-reaching. The balance between man and nature is frequently interrupted by man’s desire to change nature to improve their life. In the very early human history, people had very simple dreams to live and multiply, and they utilized the natural resources to try to create a perfect nation to live better and more conveniently in this world. Unfortunately, the construction turns to destruction on earth and nature is heavily destroyed. Man started to suffer in the new condition from all kinds of disasters as global warming, the flooding and so on. Man started realizing the value of the balance between man and nature. Ecological ethics, which means a series of moral norms upon which human beings deal with the relationship between themselves and their surrounding animals, environment and nature. Ecological ethics implies us to rethink the role of humankind; are we the dominator or master of the earth? Perhaps, actually we are ordinary members in this planet. Ecological ethics influences our attitudes on how to handle the environmental problems. The artists express their understanding of the relationship of man and nature in their works, and we see important implications of them and hope that more people can be enlightened and motivated to protect nature.

2 The Ecological Concept in Australian Literature

The Australian literature represents and records the changing ecological concept of the country. In history, the Australian’s attitudes to the environment have passed through several different stages: first, early Australians were ambivalent about the environment. While they were managing to conquer it, they were appreciating the beauty of it. More than two hundred years ago, the British and European pioneers landed on the new continent with a very strong desire to create a new nation in Australia to escape the pollution and overcrowding of their nations’ cities. On the new land they were deeply attracted by the natural beauty and they started setting up their new homes by cutting down trees and bushes, driving away the aboriginal people and exploiting the mines to obtain all kinds of natural resources. “Ever since the British colony was set up in Australia, Australians seem to have had a strange obsession with their landscapes: a love-hate relationship at least for the first hundred years or more (Glen Phillips, 2012). Second, people destroyed nature to survive; in their first step of occupying the new land, the colonists tried all ways to survive. To them, the new surroundings were strange and savage, including the Australian bush and the Aboriginal inhabitants living in the bush. In their eyes, the aboriginals were uncivilized, and they had no idea that these people actually had learned from nature on how to adapt to the wilderness over a very long period of time without changing it significantly. They disturbed and tamed everything around to meet their own needs. They killed wild animals to protect themselves. The ecological balance is hard to maintain. The environment was instantly under threat. “The further the Australian colonies spread from the rain forests of the eastern mountains and Tasmania to the central and western parts of the continent, the more the problems of environmental destruction increased in the fragile arid lands with many existing salt lakes.” (2012) Here is part of the famous poem ‘Bell Birds’, by Henry Kendall, which shows how beautiful the original rainforest country was:

Bell-Birds

By channels of coolness the echoes are calling, 

And down the dim gorges I hear the creek falling;

It lives in the mountain, where moss and the sedges

Touch with their beauty the banks and the ledges;

Through brakes of the cedar and sycamore bowers

Struggles the light that is love to the flowers.

And, softer than slumber, and sweeter than singing, The notes of the bell-birds are running and ringing.

(Kendall, in Australian and New Zealand Verse, 1950, p. 18)

Third, the disasters became increasingly serious, and people see nature as much an enemy as a friend. People were gradually aware that the environment is worth preserving and appreciating. People start learning to love the Australian environment. People come to realize the truth about how terrible the environment destruction is, and start respecting nature.

Within each stage, the contemporary Australian poets voiced the public sentiment. They grasped the spirits of the time precisely. We can find proof from the comparisons of the Henry Kendall’s poem (1839-1882) and Judith Wright (1915-2000). Kendall’s poem goes that:

“Through brakes of the cedar and sycamore bowers; struggles the light that is love to the flowers.”

Judith’s poem goes that:

“O vine, grow close upon that bone and hold it with your rooted hand.

The prophet Moses feeds the grape and fruitful is the Promised Land.”

Kendall’s poem shows the awesome beauty of nature, and we can feel the pride and adoration of the author between lines. However, Judith’s poem is immersed in the conflict between history and modern, death and prospet, love to nature and transforming of nature.

The point is, human knows that nature nurtures mankind unselfishly with its rich resources. Yet, man is so carried away in his transformation of nature that he is unaware that it also has limitations and needs constant care. People began to change their attitudes to the environment. In Australian literature world, we can still see evidence from some beloved works of great poets during the 20th century. “Bora Ring” by Judith Wright, one of the best-loved Australian poets of the 20th century is a lovely example which mourns the anticipated dying out of the Aborigines:

BORA RING

The song is gone; the dance

is secret with the dancers in the earth,

the ritual useless, and the tribal story

lost in an alien tale.

Only the grass stands up

to mark the dancing-ring; the apple-gums

posture and mime a past corroboree, murmur a broken chant.

(Wright, in New Land, New Language, 1957, p.5)

Many Australian writers and poets began writing about people’s changed attitudes to nature, and they hoped that more and more people loved nature to preserve it.

3 Glen Phillips’ Poems and His Ecological Concerns

Glen Phillips, who was born in 1936, living in Perth, West Australia, is the emeritus professor of Edith Cowan University, and the director of the International Center for Landscape and Language. He worked as the president of Australian Writers’ Association and now the lifetime honorary member of the association. Currently, he is the member of Australian English Teachers’ Association, Western Australian Writers Council and the president of International Pen Association (Perth), etc. Glen occupies an important position in the contemporary Australian literary circle. Glen grew up in the wheat belt and he has been keen on literary creation and wrote a great deal of poetry from a young age. Even since he was a child, he spent his time playing in the woods and learning animals, plants and the geography. He is good at observing and close to nature, and has a deep sense of identity with the natural environment of Western Australia. A large proportion of his poems is inspired by the surroundings of his life, including social, cultural and ecological environment. He is very aware of all the degradation and witnesses the desertification happened on his motherland. He has his own distinctive voices of Australian environment. (Han, 2014) What's happened and the consequences of it concern him. Meanwhile, the social attitudes are opposed to his increasing awareness. Therefore, Glen commits his worries about the ecological environment to poems.

The essence of ecological crisis is the loss of human values. Ecology asks people to pay attention to the value of nature and all the life, reflect our attitudes to environment and revolutionize anthropocentrism. The ultimate aim is to completely solve the ecological crisis, and rebuild a healthy society (Chen, 2019). Many writers try to make their voice heard to awaken the masses by combining the ecological concept with their works. By using literature, writers want to show this wonderful world to the ordinary people, to let people appreciate our extraordinary world, and to understand its inherent rules. The writers tend to use literary to make us realize how complex and diverse the eco-system of our planet is, and human beings are only one tiny part of it, not the center of it. All the life is equal. What human beings should do is to have a reverence for nature and live with it in harmony. Every form of life in nature has its proper position, and the existence of every creature is reasonable; they have their unique way of growth and reproduction. Without interference, nature itself is able to maintain the balance and prosperity.  Therefore, what many writers do is to give full play to their rich knowledge of plants and animals, and share with readers the natural and ecological wonders that their eyes tell them. They write them down without any comments, leaving readers to chew and ponder on them. The ecological poets do not write deliberately. Sometimes, when they are immersed in a certain natural environment, they react with the world, and the inspirations suddenly come to their mind. (Peng, 2015) The purposes of all the works with ecological concept are to see the great damage in our environment, find the beauty of nature, let the readers feel guilty and the man’s insignificance, finally change our attitude to nature and make us regard our planet with awe.

Glen grew up in field, and treats his own poems from the perspective of ecocriticism. The term ‘ecocriticism’ means ‘the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment’. He grieves over and laments the deterioration of the environment. He emphasizes the importance of the environmental responsibility. In most of his ecological poems, he uses acute insight and employs the third person internal focalization to describe one scene; without too much flowery phrases, he is just like an old father or an elder witness, who tells you what he had seen and experienced. In his descriptions, readers can feel his distress and melancholy about the charming scene at that moment. Maybe his words cannot change the reality but they are able to purify our heart.

In this part we will investigate the ecological implications of Glen Philips’ poems from three perspectives: the motivation, the contents and the effect.

3.1 The origin and characteristics of Glen Phillips’ ecological awareness

Taking advantage of a scene to express one’s emotion is one of the most frequently adopted devices in Chinese poetry. We are accustomed to accepting that the aim of describing the beauty of nature is to express poet’s personal impulses. Man’s feelings and ambitions are always the core concept, but the ecological poems have significant differences from them. The leading role of ecological poems is nature; without comments or emotion, poets just use their imagination and exquisite skill to record what they have seen and what they have thought about the nature. (Chen, 2013) Glen heard glamor of Australia from his elders and witnessed the changes happened on the land, so he is eligible and responsible to tell people how beautiful the scenery was when most lives lived in agreement with nature. Glen wants to express his love to nature, his love-hate relationship to today’s Australia, and his mixed feelings of abundant worldwide daily pictures after he visited many corners of other countries. We can feel his pure emotion to his motherland from the poem To My Wheatfields, Saltlakes and Salmon Gums; the following is an excerpt:

If you were to join me here

In my country, breathing

quietly aromatic oils

of eucalypt and salt bush

on the old bush tracks, goldfields treks,

the old sandalwood trails

the old song lines

of my stolen country!

…

If you were here

I would show the way

I have taken through

Sixty summers and winters, of footsteps in the litter

Of bark strippings, the shed leaf debris

in the powdery red dust.

And footsteps wet, on glittering Granite domes in a freezing wind.

(Glen Phillips, In the hollow of the Land Ⅰ, 2018, p.84)

The first stanza starts with enchanting wild scenery. Glen mobilizes readers’ senses of touch, smell, sight and hearing to unfold the charming landscape of natural environment. Glen willfully left out any trace of humanity, instead of staring at, enjoying and tasting the land where he grew up. We can find that Glen use three phrases: “old bush tracks”, “old sandalwood trails” and “old song lines” to represent that the charms of nature is imperishable, indestructible and eternal. Glen also expresses that if you had stayed with him at that time, you would have seen and enjoyed the peaceful and serene scenery there. These sentences are full of Glen’s affection and attachment to the old days of his land. All of a sudden the first stanza ended with “my stolen country”. The “stolen” implied the harmony between man and nature that has been stolen by modernization. Glen wrote on “If you were here I would show the way I have taken through sixty summers and winters,” in the next stanza, which shows the image that this old man who was once a little boy played here, grew up here, walked around here every day, witnessed the changes here and finally retold you the beauty here. We sense important ecological implications from Glen’s poems, not because Glen wrote them as the hymn for nature, but the poems stirred profound reflections of readers on nature. We can feel in this poem that Glen is proud of his motherland in all his life, and he wants to show this sense of pride to more people. He knows Australian history well and has experienced the modernization. What’s more, he has affections for the beautiful old days. All these elements motivate him to keep on writing about the nature and the relationship between man and nature. Without changing themes, he always uses plain and sophisticated writing techniques to display what he has seen vividly and therefore what he wrote effectively moved the readers. The readers are moved by the beauty of nature and more importantly they felt the important ecological implications from Glen’s talks with nature about the relationship in his poems.

From another poem “The Australian”, we can see the characteristics of Glen’s ecological implications more clearly. Following is the poem:

The Australian

（For Memnuna Vila-Bogdanich, 1934-2004）

His country is the flat land

where the lakes creep salt tongues before the wind

and dry grass desperately farewells its seeds in flight.

His childhood, drawn in dust like tribal legends—

strange circles, stroke that trace mysteries of life

back through distant purple trail of hills

Life change came

with images strange

of olive groves, of mountain slopes.

Against images of his land

of birth and fires burning far off,

these overlain now with beaten gold

and chiseled marble

forming towers and tombs and fallen columns;

another kind of gain. Finding another home.

(Glen Phillips, In the Hollow of the Land Ⅱ, 2018, p.112)

“The Australian” is written for one of Glen’s friends. This poem looks like that Glen tells us how the motherland of his friends is, but actually Glen is expressing his own feelings of the land. This poem is composed of three stanzas. The first stanza is the natural scenery of Australia, the second is the happening changes, and the last is his predictions of future. The changes happened in this land and brought Glen worries. The poem ended with “forming towers and tombs and fallen columns; another kind of gain. Finding another home.”, which tells us the predictable results of Australia in Glen’s eyes. If we keep on developing our world excessively and overdrawing natural resources, what remains in the world will only be the crumbling bricks. The terminal of everyone is the tomb, but no matter how we destroy nature, the life of nature is infinite. Humankind will finally “find another home” in heaven, but nature will stay here with wound. Glen is a whistleblower who is awakened, and now he is trying to wake everyone up by his poems. It is not Australian today’s situation that awakens Glen; it is the changes happening in this old continent that bring Glen ecological responsibility. The word “changes” runs through the whole poem, and the “fires” and the “tombs” show Glen’s pessimism to Australian ecology. Glen is willing to get in touch with other countries’ culture, especially Chinese; so in his ecological poems, we can find some emotions or elements which always belonged to Chinese traditional culture. What’s more, he has stayed in China for many years. Based on these two points, we can infer that the origin of his creation contains the influences of Chinese elements. We can find some proofs in the following poem:

Spring hurt Hurt

with the violence of

leaf bursting from the bark,

explosion of blossoms,

the spilling of seed.

…

Hurt

with the promise of winter’s cramping frosts;

with summer’s brazen promises

of beaten brass.

….

I ask you

to promise this-

o hurt again and yet again

o hurt spring.

(Glen Phillips, In the Hollow of the Land Ⅱ, 2018, p. 179)

In traditional Chinese culture, there is a saying that goes “grieve over the passing of spring or feel sad with the advent of autumn”. We can find the same feelings in this poem that the poet feels sad about the spring. “winter’s cramping frosts; summer’s brazen promises” shows how fragile and tender spring is. The passing winter and coming autumn both do harm to spring; the whole poem mentioned noting about the splendid image of spring, instead of some details happening in this weather. The “leaf bursting; explosion of blossoms; the spilling of seed” all show the splendid scene of spring; the readers can not only imagine these pictures, but also feel the pains brought to spring by these new lives. This poem doesn’t mention any human activities and just shows us Glen’s enthusiasm, acute observation and sensitive emotion to nature. This poem tells us the original aspiration of Glen; he personifies nature, including weather, flora and fauna, and uses his sensory organs to bring empathy and sympathy to readers. Glen is just a bystander, although he tells us the “spring hurt”, he does nothing to bother it or change it; in this point lies the main ecological awareness of Glen. Ecology has its own law; although we may have some mood changes, we humankind have no right to interfere nature. We can see that Glen is skillful with using imagism. Imagism is one of the characteristics of Glen’s poems. His poems always render his impression of a visual object or scene as precisely, vividly, and tersely as possible, and without comments or generalization. Often the impression is rendered by means of metaphor, or by juxtaposing, without indicating a relationship. What Glen’s ecological poems do is to leave a vivid and exquisite image to you and then let the readers think profoundly. A poet who is close to nature is definitely not willing to constrained by traditional style; Glen always tries to do some innovations in his poems, and the most typical attempt is making poems in special shapes which are related to the contents, for example:

Touch of the Butterfly

Ever watch a butterfly touch down?

There’s no screech of tyres or smoke puff,

as the selected leaf or red bud

trembles imperceptibly and

braces for this,

the softest

kiss.

(Glen Phillips, In the Hollow of the Land Ⅰ, 2018, p. 132)

He shaped the poem into the outline of a butterfly. With the line getting shorter and shorter, the description of the butterfly gets tenderer and tenderer, and finally it ends with one word “soft”. From this poem we can see Glen shows his own ingenuity not only by the contents, but also by trying to use visual effects to deepen readers’ impressions. Glen exquisitely portrays the details of nature and uses his words to mobilize all senses of the readers; his purpose is not just recording the subtle beauty in nature or in his eyes, but transferring what he has enjoyed to people and arousing the respect and appreciation in everyone’s heart.

We can find some other clues of the origin of Glen’s ecological awareness from the quotes of one poem——Wave Motion. The quotes of this poem go that: “on the beach at night, alone, as the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song, as I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future”. This quote comes from Leaves of Grass of Walt Whitman, and here shows the whole poem:

On the beach at night alone,

As the old mother sways her to and fro, singing her husky song,

As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes, and of the future.

A vast similitude interlocks all,

All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets

All distances of place however wide,

All distances of time, all inanimate forms,

All souls, all living bodies, though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,

All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,

All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,

All identities that have existed, or may exist, on this globe, or any globe,

All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,

This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d,

And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.

(Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855)

The name of this Whitman’s poem is called on the beach at night alone. The “old mother” in this poem is a metaphor, because in French, “old mother” (la mere) is a homophone for “sea” (la mer). So in this poem, Whitman extolled everything in universe, no matter past or now, living or dead. Whitman implied that all things which ever existed in the universe are connected. Glen happened to coincide with Whitman’s idea, and apparently Wave Motion is inspired by his poem. The Community with Shared Future for Mankind and the ecological awareness of Glen can all be unified into Whitman’s basic idea——everything is connected. Glen’s ecological awareness aims at pointing out that nature and humankind are a unified whole. Nothing can be prior or superior to others, and nothing can be independent in the world. The invisible connections between everything assure our world keeping on running, and only when we humankind manage to maintain the healthy connections in ecology and treat everything as a community, our world is able to be thriving.

3.2 The main images and sense of ecological responsibility of Glen Philips’ Poems

The main images of Glen Philips’ Poems are the landscapes around his hometown. The wheat belt makes indelible impression on him and gives him too much inspiration. All Glen’s friends said that he knows everything there and the wheat belt makes Glen a poet, at the same time Glen’s poems make wheat belt famous around the world. In Australian poems, it is common to see the European images, because many people still have attachment to the ancestors, which acts as a kind of nostalgia. The short history makes these immigration lack of a sense of belonging, so when we mention the general style of Australian poems, what comes into mind is a handful of Australian peculiarities and a large amount of European elements. Except the artists in early stage, the later poets treat the harsh environment as an enemy; after conquering nature, when they tend to pay attention to the beauty of Australia, they didn’t forget to compare it with their ancestors’ motherland—Europe. The “Cultural Cringe” also drives some famous modern writers away from the local flavor; they would rather investigate the grand themes related to world’s future rather than jungle things. As a poet in western Australia, Glen keeps his eyes on this place which hasn’t been totally eroded by metropolis. He is accustomed to using flora, fauna, crops or everything that lives freely in western Australia. He made no attempt to conceal his intense love to the wild field.

There always a mood of gloom behind Glen’s vivid description; in the foregoing example To My Wheatfields, Saltlakes and Salmon Gums, we can find some words which are fulfilled with sentiment: “the shadowy aisles”, “bark strippings, the shed leaf debris”, “a freezing wind”. These words all reveal the writer’s mood; Glen was sick at heart at the sight of the scenes which he is so familiar with and he cherished the memory of his passing age. He knew everything here and he can show you every corner of his Wheatfield, but the old man’s sadness and wistfulness are concealed in his proud introduction; he lamented for the landscape which accompanies all his life, the future of the unchanging nature and the peace and serenity in western Australia. This proves what we have mentioned above that ecological poems always let nature be the leading role, and all moods of the poets revolve around ecology instead of magnifying their own sentiment. Glen didn’t try to write any magnificent or grand words like epics to incite readers into fanaticism; without any declarations and appeals, he just writes like a sagacious old man, standing in the wild of Australia, and tells you what he knows about this virgin land in a soft and calm voice. No one is reluctant to ponder on the wisdom of the elder.

The power of Glen’s poems is not making readers excited but let people slow down their paces and think more things, not only the things mentioned in certain poem but also everything related to nature, environment or our earth. So the power of Glen’s poem is to introduce a tranquil place to reader, leave atmosphere and leave more space to let people rethink what nature means to us and the importance of us to environment. To My Wheatfields, Saltlakes and Salmon Gums only shows the overall style and the general feelings of Glen’s poems, but another example will clearly show Glen’s attitude to the environment and the relationships between human being and nature.

Windrows Burning

great banked windrows burning

in an autumn night;

you think that’s the end of another

irreplaceable grove of the woods.

But can’t all grow again?

If they don’t start ploughing the scars

this winter, saplings will spring,

prehistoric palms and grass trees

burst from their buried bulbs

and etch the coppery hillsides

with traverses of green;

until the forest stalks this way again.

I glimpsed on an autumn

evening when the new moon only

survived the first hours of dusk

that, for some, life was one

long extended gash of pain——

like those windrows fires

consuming all that patch

of clay had given to the light,

But there is time left for

The thin moon to show again where

the pale threads of new life stir,

to push away ancient weight of earth.

(Glen Phillips, In the Hollow of the Land Ⅰ, 2018, p. 86)

Glen is not a poet who buried himself in his musty old books and ignored the outside world, although in old age he still travels around the world to contact new things and thoughts. In this poem he expresses his idea that everything people have done to nature, no matter good or bad, has no effects to the development or progress of our planet. No matter how we destroy the environment or open up wasteland for farming, the time keeps going on and nature keeps healing or growing. “You think that’s the end of another irreplaceable grove of the woods. But can’t all grow again?” Glen（2018） uses these philosophic words to tell people, nothing will end nature; all the ends or terminal that you thought are actually the new beginning of the world. Within four lines, Glen expressed that human beings or all lives in world are not the center of our planet; what’s eternal is only the existence of the planet and the moving of time. “Windrows Burning” may be a sad thing or a disaster to farmer but nature seems to be wakened from a dead sleep. “clay had given to the light” clearly shows Glen’s attitudes that soil belongs to no one, and the best way to solve the environment problem is to let every natural thing free. Still according with Glen’s style, the word “old” runs through the whole poem. Phrases like “prehistoric palms”, “ancient weight of earth”, and “extended gash of pain” underline the long history of earth and the strength of life. The lives buried under the soil are not disappearing, and without human activities, everything in nature can reborn. The earth and nature have gone through trillion years of progress, so they are independent individuals, on the contrary, human beings are the parasite of the earth. If a fire devastates everything in farmland, the soil will restore its health. If a disaster erases all traces of human, the planet will revive after the treatment of time. The end of “old” means the birth of new lives. In Glen’s heart, the ecological responsibility and concept don’t mean to call on everyone to rescue our earth, but to waken people up and make them be aware of the truth—what we do to improve the condition of the environment actually means to rescue ourselves. No matter what happens to this planet, it is able to heal itself. Glen just drew the picture of “Windrows Burning” as a window to inspire people what the ecological responsibility really means, and take this common incident in farmland as a metaphor to point out the insignificance of us compared with environment. Birth will follow death; reviving will follow dying; nothing could change the law of nature. Glen uses this flame to enkindle the truth of ecological concept and arouse the awareness that nature does not need to be rescued, and saving ourselves is in urgent need.

Similar to the above example, one of another main images of Glen’s poem is natural environment, following the excerpt of the poem Storm Dancing:

When yellowing leaves litter paths, rain comes:

wet wheels swish shining streets with whiplash swirl,

householder conduct on doorway rostrums

overtures as their umbrellas unfurl;

…

Meanwhile, husbands dive from backdoors, too late

to save the drooping washing in their rush.

Arc-welding warn! Great thunderheads re-form;

like the condemned, we bow before this storm.

(Glen Phillips, In the Hollow of the Land Ⅱ, 2018, p. 26)

This poem renders a picture before the coming of storm. The happy children, the parents in hurry and the scared scene of thunder form the daily life of ordinary people when facing the unavoidable natural phenomena. The last sentence “like the condemned, we bow before this storm” shows the insignificance of human compared with nature. Indigenous people have a connection of gratitude and reverence toward nature, and if there is no invasions of modern life, what people can do is to comply with nature and live in harmony with nature. The children enjoy the rainstorm and the parents worry about the storm, which are the pastoral life of people in countryside. Although the whole poem gives readers a sense of oppression, we can also find some pure sentiment and happiness in it. The instinctive reverence for nature and the innocence of children bring vigor to this image. What behinds this mixed and disorderly picture is the harmonious image formed by the concerted efforts of humankind and nature. Glen was born in countryside and he loves the pastoral life, he enjoys the peaceful life without the bother of modern techniques. The smallest organization of humankind is family, so Glen gives up sermons that propagates the invisible relation and great meanings of the relationships between people and nature; Glen writes down some trivial things in life to remind readers how beautiful and fantastic life is if we live close to nature and imply that we and nature are a community with shared future. Learning to respect nature and treating nature as friends, are the ecological concepts of Glen.

Glen also wrote some poems about plants and animals, which carefully describe their appearance and imagine their mental activity. We can find the theme of this kind of poems is always “free”. The following is the Caged Birds are favoured by old men:

It is true old men discover

a love of keeping pets; singing birds

to carry about suspended in

their cages of bamboo; to bill

and coo, to chirp or sing lustily.

Old men totter to meet in morning

or afternoon, proud of birdsong

pleased with plumage, bright beaks,

beady eyes, the flutter of little wings.

They bring them to their gatherings

of green jars of tea and melon seed.

In stacked cage proud possessions

strut on perches and flutter feathers,

cock a head askance to show

the flecked white of beady eyes.

Why do old men want to do this?

Have they discovered only now

a last kind of love? Found a way

to keep love forever perched

on a swing, yet waiting for the day

their master’s withered hand

at last will set love free?

(Glen Phillips, In the Hollow of the Land, 2018, p. 152)

Despite the fact that this poem is not written about his motherland, it reveals his love to creatures and life. The first two stanzas describe the grace and beauty of the birds,  meanwhile  represent  the  cheerful  and light-hearted images of the old man gathering together, which just leaves readers the impression of happiness and comfort and we may forget that the birds are still in cage. The third stanza compares a life——the bird to one’s property; suddenly the feeling of sadness pours to readers. In cage, the bird perked up its head, and looks charming and energetic, but it deserves the sky and freedom. The bird is not born to stay in cage; bird’s pretty face concealed the loneliness. Maybe the bird doesn’t know what is free, while the old man has no right to imprison the lovely creature. So in the last stanza, Glen asked directly “Why do old men want to do this?” Glen explained for them: they want to “keep love forever perched”, and the subtext is selfishness. By using this daily scene in Chinese park, Glen satirizes man’s selfishness and bad behaviors to creatures, at the same time insinuates his attitude to the relationships between human beings and other living beings. Until the last sentence, Glen still uses a rhetorical question to query the old man’s hobby and behavior. Glen shows his attitude that all things in this planet share it fairly. Nothing has the right to be superior; all the creatures should enjoy the basic right—freedom. Not only the old man, but also mankind, is used to controlling and possessing others’ lives at will. Grandly called “appreciating the beauty”, actually mankind has no differences with butcher, because both are depriving lives. Animals or plants don’t have the same complex thinking processes like us, therefore we need to realize the deeper relationships. The ecological responsibility just belongs to one kind of creature—human. If mankind does not disturb the normalcy of nature, the ecosystem will be more prosperous. Every country and government emphasizes the human right and freedom of the people, but no laws enforce the freedom of animals and plants. Birds are locked in cages just because their beauty; they do nothing wrong while the elder imprisoned them and showed them off for vanity at the moment.

Glen doesn’t refute all human activities, and his wish is that everything on earth reaches peaceful coexistence. As we mentioned above, the spirits of Whitman and Glen get unified in the ecology. Whitman thinks about the relationships from a much higher level, which issimilar to Emerson’s Pantheism——animistic world view. Whitman inspired readers that everything in universe has its own position, and nothing is an isolated island; we are all connected and the universe is just a container. Glen thinks from a lower level and has insight into the ecological problems. The collision happened between modern and pastoral life is inevitable, and the contradictions are getting worse. Glen didn’t try to be a preacher to enumerate the problems and point out what we should and shouldn’t do; he just renders numerous daily pictures of pastoral life, weather changes or human activities to enlighten numb people who work, or live in metropolis. Glen reminds us that we should not be the parasite of the world, instead, we and everything in world are a community with shared future. The simplest words can move readers most deeply. Glen knows that as a special poet in western Australia who has witnessed the changes during the past 80 years, he has the responsibility to tell the truth, and this responsibility is what he called the indispensable ecological responsibility. He takes it as the conscience of a writer. The landscape and relationships between man and nature in his childhood still linger, but the society needs development. Glen puts his efforts into recording or saving some moving moments in nature with his philosophic words and exquisite skills, aiming at enlightening readers. Glen, as a sage, writes down the poems full of significance of “To see a world in a flower”, looking forward to guiding readers to realize the truth of our position in ecosystem, giving us a moment of tranquility and leading us to respect the miracle of life.

4 The Ecological Implication of Glen Philips’ Poems from the Perspective of Community with Shared Future for Mankind

Community with shared future for mankind ， as an important idea to solve human problems and global dilemmas，is proposed in response to the development and changes in the world situation and has increasingly gained the value recognition of the international community (Jian, 2019). According to Xi Fang and Mengwen Pan (Xi & Pan, 2019), there are four aspects that are required to build the community of shared future for mankind. First of all, it’s necessary to establish the concept of international power and to promote the concept of common interests; besides, it’s also necessary to advocate new concepts of civilization and to build more acceptable systems of global ecological civilization. Living in one world, all nations are in a big family. With the development of our society, human has brought too much damage to the globe. The ecological crises teach human to learn to protect it through all possible ways. Writers shoulder their responsibility by using their pens to write about the practical condition humans are facing now, hoping that people may realize the severity of the problem and work together to fight for a better and more fulfilled future for all mankind.

As a nature lover, Glen has written and is still writing a great deal of topics that are about nature. The readers saw what Australia was like in his childhood and we can also see what it is now. The same thing happens in other places on earth, in Africa, Asia, America and perhaps everywhere in the world. When humans recall the “good old days”, they feel compunctious and they will want to correct themselves in future life. Here we see the great power of the artistic works and their influence on people’s awareness.

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