This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: In 1804, William Blake wrote in his poem Jerusalem of England's "green and pleasant" land. This idealized vision of English pastoral has resonated through two centuries, fusing the character of the nation with its landscape—those "mountains green" and "pleasant pastures." Turned into a hymn by Sir Hubert Parry in 1916, Jerusalem is sung annually at the Last Night of the Proms.
It has been adopted by various English sports as an unofficial anthem, including at the Commonwealth Games. It's invoked regularly by politicians of all persuasions. The "green and pleasant land" has become a powerful emblem for England.
In my book, A History of England in 25 Poems, I've traced that "green and pleasant" ideal over a millennium of English writing as it forges ideas of English identity. But now, a scorching summer has left this green and pleasant land in flames, and we're warned that this is only the beginning. What could climate crisis mean for our self-image as a nation and for the stories we tell about ourselves?
The idea of England as the green and pleasant land doesn't begin with Blake. It's part of 1,300 years of tradition in poetry and prose that goes back at least to the writing of the Venerable Bede, an English monk, author and scholar, in the eighth century. Bede describes Britain as "an island of the ocean," filled with green—trees, crops, pasture—filigreed with rivers and springs, and stocked with natural resources.
Since then, English poetry has been steeped in imagery of England's green. The 13th-century round song Sumer Is Icumen In celebrates the arrival of spring. and the wood springs (into leaf) now (Groweþ sed The two-tone call of the cuckoo echoes through the song—a joyful expression of shared experience as the familiar green of seasonal renewal returns. England's green is there in the flower-carpeted arbor (a leafy, flower-filled garden) of the 14th-century poem Pearl, where a father lays his head to grieve for his lost daughter, possibly killed by the plague.
The arbor is "shaded with plants bright and beautiful" ("schadowed þis worteȝ ful schyre and schene"). It's the perfect English summer's day, recognizable to any reader—at odds with the father's desolation at the loss of his little child. And there's the famous springtime of Chaucer's pilgrims, as they ride out through "April, with its sweet showers" ("Aprill with his shoures soote") on their way to Canterbury in The Canterbury Tales.
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