The poem explicitly expressed the issue of environment degradation, when the protagonist exclaimed, (upon learning that he was to give up the land he tilled for many years), "These fields were burthened when they came to me...It looks as if it never could endure Another Master." Apart from the theme of environmental degradation, moral degeneration was especially explicit in the works of Tennyson and Carlyle, who discussed the importance of morality in the midst of humanity's success in attaining higher levels of intellectual development and knowledge about the nature...

"In Memoriam," Tennyson's religious explication, presented humanity as incapable of achieving further development in life without spiritual guidance. This humble realization showed humanity's intellectual development as a gift from God, not solely based on human capacity and faculties alone: "...we cannot know, for knowledge is of things we see and yet we trust it comes from thee..."
Similarly, Carlyle expressed his dismay over the evident moral degeneration in his society as the 'poor become poorer and the rich become richer' in the age of modernity. Reflecting on the lack of morality among the rich (aristocracy) or the non-working class, Carlyle argued, "...in these godless two centuries, where is our answer? Neither the Church nor the Anti-church...all this is already seen, or beginning to be seen, for what it is; a thing that Nature does not own." Moral degeneration was illustrated through the apparent lack of spirituality of any kind among people in the modern society, a shift towards agnosticism, a trend that would predominate society for the coming years since inception in 19th century.