William Wordsworth’s “To a Butterfly” problematically frames a world where the poet does not exist in the same space as the insect. But how does the natural world look back at the human? How do we look to the living planet? Three poets answer this question. First, John Aikin announces a turn towards nature and the natural world in poetry. Barbauld’s “To Mrs. P--, with some Drawings of Birds and Insects” demonstrates the turn put into practice. Selections from James Thomson’s The Seasons elucidate the poet’s close proximity to living, breathing insects who prove sentient and purposeful, as Thomson uses personification to oppose anthropectomy. Insect life in Erasmus Darwin’s Temple of Nature reveals his materialist thinking and his recognition that insects are a crucial part of organic process. In his discussion of parasitism in particular we find a pre-modern acceptance of the notion of symbiotic life. In contrast, in “The Caterpillar” by Anna Laetitia Barbauld the parasitic behavior of the European tent caterpillar, or Lackey moth, shows how human ethics can be stretched to their limit when planetary life is observed “looking back.”