Manure returns nutrients and organic matter to farmland, linking livestock keeping with the renewal of cultivated soil. Though earthy and unpleasant, it is essential to many traditional farming systems. In poetry, manure can puncture idealised pastoral scenes by restoring smell, dirt, and physical reality. It may symbolise decay transformed into fertility, the usefulness of what is despised, or the cyclical relation between waste and growth. Comic and satirical poets also use it to undermine pretension and expose the material basis of rural beauty.

Manure is animal dung, often mixed with straw or other bedding, collected and spread to restore nutrients and organic matter to soil. It exposes the physical reality behind idealised rural beauty. In poetry, manure may be comic, satirical, or symbolic of decay becoming fertility and rejected matter acquiring value. Students should distinguish manure from artificial fertiliser. Related terms include dung, muck, compost, fertiliser, midden, soil fertility, livestock, and spreading.