Fenerty starts the poem off with his love for the tree, thus nature. He then makes the tree out to be a prophet, or a guardian of nature. Then he questions what all must have past during its life time (How many a changeful scene has fled, since first thy vernal cloak was spread, in this lone forest wild). This is where he starts talking about humanity. He even mentions the decline of Spain. Fenerty has another poem called the Decline of Spain. The poem was never dated, and is difficult to get an idea when it was written, but it could have be written around the same time as Betual Nigra (1854). Henry Thomas Buckle, in his The History of Civilization in England (Volume two), mentions the decline of Spain. Fenerty did read this volume (mentioned in his Essay on Progress), but the second volume appeared in 1861. It's possible that Fenerty wrote The Decline of Spain poem around the same time as EOP. In Betula Nigra, Fenerty is basically wondering for the tree (and if the tree could talk, Fenerty would be asking it questions). But he also wants to make it known that man and nature, though two of the same kind, their differences are due to man’s ignorance (when he states the American Maxim – make war on the wilderness). That’s all man sees of nature – not its beauty, or a vehicle to wonderment, but rather its grounds to set the battlefield. In other words, we simply ignore it. Towards the end, one gets the feeling that his purpose of the poem was to use the life of the tree to display human deeds (good or bad). The poem doesn't go in depth on human achievement, but it does create an apparent contrast between the serenity of nature and the strife of man – where both man and tree are related and share a history together, yet man chooses to ignore it, being too consumed by his own indifferences.