During the Romantic era, many Americans responded positively and enthusiastically to writers’ thoughts about the connection between humans and the rest of nature. What is Americans' relationship to nature today? What would Thoreau, Emerson, and the Fireside Poets say about the ways in which Americans tend to interact with our natural surroundings?Identify two examples from modern American life that show how connected (or disconnected) we are to nature in the ways described by the American Romantics. Then select one quote from an American Romantic writer that relates to each of your examples. Explain how the quote relates to the example. Is the example evidence of a strong Romantic connection or a weak Romantic connection to nature?

Read the excerpt from "a defence of poetry.” poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide—abide, because there is no portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man. which details from the excerpt provide more information about shelley’s idea that poetry "makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world”? check all that apply. arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news to those with whom their sisters abide no portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man