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A The world is too much with us; late and soon,
B Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
B Little we see in Nature that is ours;
A We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
A This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
B The winds that will be howling at all hours,
B And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;|
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
C It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
D A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
C So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
D Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
C Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;|
D Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides3/WorldIsTooMuch.html#Notes
Type of Work
.......William Wordsworth's "The World Is Too Much With Us" is a lyric poem in the form of a sonnet. In English, there are two types of sonnets, the Petrarchan and theShakespearean, both with fourteen lines. Wordsworth's poem is a Petrarchan sonnet, developed by the Italian poet Petrarch (1304-1374), a Roman Catholic priest.
.......A Petrarchan sonnet consists of an eight-line stanza (octave) and a six-line stanza (sestet). The first stanza presents a theme or problem, and the second stanza develops the theme or suggests a solution to the problem. The rhyme scheme of a Petrarchan sonnet is as follows:
First stanza (octave): abba, abba
Second stanza (sestet): cde, cde or another combination such as cdc, cdc. In the case of Wordsworth's poem, the combination is cd, cd. cd.
.......William Wordsworth is believed to have composed the poem in 1802, when the Industrial Revolution was in full flower. No doubt the materialism the revolution engendered was one of the reasons Wordsworth wrote the poem. He published it in 1807 as part of a collection, Poems in Two Volumes.
.......Society is so bent on making and spending money in smoky factories and fast-paced business enterprises that it ignores the pristine glory of nature, which is a reflection of the divine. This is a universal theme that remains relevant in today's world.
.......The tone is angry, modulated with sarcasm and seeming vengefulness. First, the poet scolds society for devoting all its energies to material enterprises and pleasures. While pampering their bodies, he says, people are starving their souls. He next announces sarcastically that he would rather be a pagan; at least then he could appreciate nature through different eyes and even see Proteus rising from the sea—perhaps to wreak vengeance on complacent humankind.
.......Wordsworth presents the poem in first-person plural in the first eight lines and part of the ninth, using we, ours, and us. At the end of the ninth line, he switches to first-person singular, using I. Use of first-person plural enables Wordsworth to chastise the world without seeming preachy or sanctimonious, for he is including himself in his reprimand.
.......Wordsworth wrote most of the lines in the poem in iambic pentameter, in which a line has five pairs of syllables. Each pair consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Lines 5 and 6 demonstrate this pattern.
.......1.................2................3..............4................5
The SEA..|..that BARES..|..her BO..|..som TO..|..the MOON,
.........1.................2..................3................4..............5
The WINDS..|..that WILL..|..be HOWL..|..ing AT..|..all HOURS
.......Wordsworth veers from this pattern in lines 2 and 3, in which he stresses the first syllable of each line.
.......We are so preoccupied with our worldly affairs—including making money and spending it—that we weaken our ability to perceive what really matters. We have given our souls away in order to reap a material blessing (sordid boon). In our quest for material gain, we do not notice the beauty of the sea or the fury of the winds. Nothing in nature moves us. Well, I would rather be a pagan brought up in an outdated religion. Then I would be inclined to stand in a meadow and appreciate nature around me. I could spot Proteus rising from the sea or listen to Triton blowing his conch shell.
The World Is Too Much With Us 1......The world is too much with us; late and soon,1 1...late and soon: Our fixation on materialism has been a problem in the past and will continue to be a problem in the future. |
Figures of Speech
.......Following are examples of figures of speech in the poem.
Alliteration
Line 1: The world is too much with us
Line 2: we lay waste our powers
Line 4: We have given our hearts away
Line 5: bares her bosom
Line 6: The winds that will be howling
Metaphor
Line 4: We have given our hearts away
Comparison of hearts to attention or concern or to enthusiasm or life
Line 10: suckled in a creed outworn
Comparison of creed to a mother nursing her child
Oxymoron
Line 4: sordid boon. (See number 2 under Notes.)
Personification
Line 5: The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon
Comparison of the sea to a woman and of the moon to a person who sees the woman
Simile
Lines 6-7: The winds that will be howling at all hours,
................And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers
................Comparison of the winds to flowers
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http://bestword.ca/William_Wordsworth_The_World_is_Too_Much_With_Us_Analysis.html
Analysis of “The World is too Much with Us” by William Wordsworth: Wordsworth at a Glance
Jordan Dickie,
Your analysis of "The World is Too Much With Us" is impressive. I am exceedingly fond of how you portrayed Wordsworth's verbiage to be fantastically romantic while also exhibiting very spiritual views. This intelligent conclusion takes much time and reasoning.
However, at first glance, this poem does not seem like much. What were your views and ideas about this poem when you first read its words?
Sincerely,
Liz Burdeau
Firstly, Liz, thank you very much for your kind email and excellent question. The poem “The World is Too Much with Us”, much like the majority of William Wordsworth’s poems, has a deceptively simple appearance that makes it easy to overlook its underlying philosophy and message. It is for this artistic virtue that I absolutely agree with you when you state ‘at first glance, this poem does not seem like much’; Wordsworth just has such a way with the language, and pulls us so deeply into such emotionally primal imagery, that I, myself, even forget to appreciate the romantic philosophy that so dramatically inspired many of his poems – a failure to see the shore for the “Daffodils”, shall we say.
THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; 5
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. – Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; 10
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
William Wordsworth, 1807
The first four lines of Wordsworth’s “The World is Too Much with Us” hold particular power, and give significant insight into the message Wordsworth is attempting to communicate: “The world is too much with us; late and soon, / Getting and spending, we lay waste to our powers: / Little we see in Nature that is ours; / We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!” (“Sordid boon” meaning a filthy or vile payment; an endowment of our hearts – or our very souls – in exchange for materialistic pursuits and a so-called ‘civilized’ existence). Wordsworth describes how we make our world “too much” for a healthy, spiritually fulfilling life, filling our days with the emotionally devastating subsistence that has defined our societies since the same industrial revolution that would have reached its bleakest peak around the same time Wordsworth wrote “The World is Too Much with Us”. Wordsworth describes how we overwhelm ourselves with being “late and soon” with our frantic schedules; “getting and spending” our resources on manufactured and emotionally hollow needs; and, finally, how we “lay waste to our powers”: squandering our time, our energy, our artistry, our philosophical and spiritual proliferation in the name of progress and production – committing spiritual felo-de-se; having never known the lives we unwittingly destroy. Wordsworth’s argument continues to describe how, because of this bitter-sweet exchange of innocence for industrialization there is “little we see in nature that is ours” anymore; we are so estranged from our natural origins that nature is no longer a mother, nor a home, but an opponent to be conquered, a wild element to be tamed in the proverbial struggle of ‘man vs. nature’ and, in doing so, “have given our hearts away” in a “sordid boon” for which man has been suffering the humanitarian and spiritual consequences even to this day.
In the lines that follow Wordsworth captures the romantic and fantastical imagery of passionate, sexually vivacious elements as they lust, rage, and pacify in their divine self-actualization, and how we, in our natural estrangement, fail to see the celestial animations acting all around us: “This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; / The winds that will be howling at all hours, / And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; / For this, for everything, we are out of tune; / It moves us not.” Wordsworth’s depiction of the Sea, the Moon, and the Winds are so primal, and so wild, that it is difficult for the reader to not feel some loss in the sin of contemporary society’s estrangement; how “for this, for everything, we are out of tune”; how we have shut ourselves off from a fantastic natural world that was once inherently ours, and now, in our self-righteous ignorance, detached ourselves from our very spiritual origins. We are, through our civilization, spiritually deadened to the fantasy and wonder that once surrounded us; “it moves us not.”
In the final lines of “The World is Too Much with Us”, Wordsworth avidly proclaims how he would have rather been born into some ancient pre-Christian creed, where, mercifully ignorant of civilization, he would have lived in a fantastical world inhabited by forgotten Pagan deities whose only pantheons were to be found in the forests, the waves of the sea, and the constellations of the stars:
... – Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; 10
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
It is in these lines that many readers may feel a special connection with William Wordsworth and his poem, “The World is Too Much with Us”. It is my belief that there is rarely an individual who does not, at some point in their lives, fantasize with the idea of retreating to the “bosom of nature” where they can escape the emotional strain of society and exist, once again, as children living innocently within nature, free of the spiritual void so characteristic of modern civilization. It is this fantastical retreat that many readers will share in common with Wordsworth when he describes how, in his escape from civilization he might stand “…on [a] pleasant lea, / [and] have glimpses that would make [him] less forlorn”. Standing in a grassy field of tranquility, Wordsworth will witness the divine sights that will save him from the emotional vexation and spiritual disquietude that plague those who are dissatisfied by the hollow race of contemporary society. Wordsworth, once again, plays mouthpiece to the angst experienced by the emotionally deep, the spiritually tormented - those seeking more from their lives than industry, progress, and financial gain.
At first glance, “The World is Too Much with Us” by William Wordsworth can seem like the naive fantasy of an impoverished romantic, his effortless language describing in simple words the emotions that are so common to us all, and yet unappreciated because of their universality. But, at its heart, “The World is Too Much with Us” is a timeless message from one romantic to over two hundred years of readership; the message that mankind was meant for more than civilization, and it is through our civilization that we have not only lost touch with who we really are as human beings, but what it ultimately means to be human.
