The World Is Too Much with Us
The World Is Too Much with Us - form Summary
Sonnet of Urgent Lament
This poem is a compact sonnet that channels Wordsworth's Romantic complaint about modern life. The opening eight lines present a forceful indictment of materialism and humanity's alienation from nature. At the sonnet's turn (line 9) the speaker pivots to a wishful alternative: preferring the imaginative vision of a pagan faith that would restore feeling and mythic contact with sea-gods. The structure intensifies the contrast between loss and yearning.
Read Complete AnalysesThe 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; 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; 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.
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