When humans have polluted air and soil and water with toxic chemicals and radiation, and cities and growing populations are forever encroaching on farmlands and forests.
As for the rhyme, Wordsworth obviously stretched things a bit by his simile of winds
up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
That is one of the pitfalls of rhyme in verse. It leads all too often to such inadequate or unlikely comparisons, but Wordsworth felt he needed “flowers”; what else was he to rhyme with “powers,” “ours,” and “hours”? When using rhyme, a poet must be very careful to remain its master rather than its servant.
less forlorn — less depressed and unhappy