Write an introductory paragraph based on the ideas of the poems "My Heart Soars" and "The Land God Forgot." Develop these ideas regarding the impact of your significant experience.

Chief Dan George's "My Heart Soars" and Robert William Service's "The Land that God Forgot" are two poems that draw inspiration from the profound, transcendental experiences an individual may have while immersed in nature. However, these two poems provide divergent ideas about how human beings have chosen to interact with nature. George's poem focuses on the the human desire to commune with nature and to allow the beauty and majesty of mountains, streams, stars, and flowers to elevate and enliven the human spirit. Service's poem references mountains, streams, stars, and meadowlands as well.
However, in his survey of nature, beauty and majesty are not mentioned at all. Instead, Service focuses on the ways that humanity has desecrated and destroyed the environment. While George writes about the soaring of his soul, Service laments "thy heart's abysmal loneliness" that comes from looking out on "the fell-arch spirit of the Wild." Where George sees beauty and majesty, Service only sees a wilderness tamed and hence, its beauty marred and its majesty diminished. These competing themes found in "My Heart Soars" and "The Land the God Forgot" provide a poignant example of how personal experience profoundly impacts one's perception of the world around them.
A closer intertextual examination of these poems, line by line and phrase by phrase might allow the reader to gain greater insight not only into their understanding of how humanity interacts with nature, but also how their own individual experience might determine which of these poems resonates with them most profoundly. The interplay between language and environment, writer and audience is delicate. Indeed, the delicacy of these interactions mirrors the extremes of soaring spirits and lonely hearts that George's and Service's works juxtapose when read side-by-side. Ultimately, the conveyance, communion with, and consumption of beauty and majesty—whether in nature or poetry—is a tenuous relationship.