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 the Shakespearean, 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.

Composition and Publication

.......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.

Theme

.......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.

Tone

.......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.
Point of View

.......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.

Meter

.......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.

Summary of the Poem

.......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

By William Wordsworth

Text, Summary, and Notes

1......The world is too much with us; late and soon,1

2......Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

3......Little we see in nature that is ours;

4......We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!2

5......The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,

6......The winds that will be howling at all hours,

7......And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,

8......For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

9......It moves us not.—Great God! I'd rather be

10....A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;3

11....So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

12....Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

13....Have sight of Proteus4 rising from the sea;

14....Or hear old Triton5 blow his wreathéd horn.

Notes

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.

2...sordid boon: shameful gain; tarnished blessing. This phrase is an oxymoron, a form of paradox that
juxtaposes contradictory words.

3...suckled . . . outworn: Brought up in an outdated religion.

4...Proteus: In Greek mythology, a sea god who could change shape at will and who possessed complete
knowledge of the past, present, and future.

5...Triton: In Greek mythology, a sea god who had the body of a man and the tail of a fish. He used a
conch—the spiral shell of a mollusk—as a trumpet.

..

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

Study Questions and Writing Topics

1. Write an essay arguing that Wordsworth's theme remains highly relevant today. Be generous with
examples of people "getting and spending" while ignoring—or even abusing—nature.

2. What is a pagan? Read a short biography of Wordsworth, then decide whether he was serious when
he wrote that he would rather be a pagan.

3. Protean is an English word derived from the name of the Greek god Proteus (line 13). In an
authoritative dictionary, look up protean if you do.not know the meaning. Then write a paragraph about
a person who has a protean personality.

4. What is the meaning of wreathéd in the last line of the poem. Hint: Read the definition of Triton
under Notes, above, then look up the word wreathed in an authoritative dictionary.

Source : http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides3/WorldIsTooMuch.html

Context

William Wordsworth was born on April 7th, 1770, in Cockermouth, Cumberland, England. Young
William’s parents, John and Ann, died during his boyhood. Raised amid the mountains of Cumberland
alongside the River Derwent, Wordsworth grew up in a rustic society, and spent a great deal of his time
playing outdoors, in what he would later remember as a pure communion with nature. In the early
1790s William lived for a time in France, then in the grip of the violent Revolution; Wordsworth’s
philosophical sympathies lay with the revolutionaries, but his loyalties lay with England, whose
monarchy he was not prepared to see overthrown. While in France, Wordsworth had a long affair with
Annette Vallon, with whom he had a daughter, Caroline. A later journey to France to meet Caroline, now
a young girl, would inspire the great sonnet “It is a beauteous evening, calm and free.”
The chaos and bloodshed of the Reign of Terror in Paris drove William to philosophy books; he was
deeply troubled by the rationalism he found in the works of thinkers such as William Godwin, which
clashed with his own softer, more emotional understanding of the world. In despair, he gave up his
pursuit of moral questions. In the mid-1790s, however, Wordsworth’s increasing sense of anguish forced
him to formulate his own understanding of the world and of the human mind in more concrete terms.
The theory he produced, and the poetics he invented to embody it, caused a revolution in English
literature.

Developed throughout his life, Wordsworth’s understanding of the human mind seems simple enough
today, what with the advent of psychoanalysis and the general Freudian acceptance of the importance
of childhood in the adult psyche. But in Wordsworth’s time, in what Seamus Heaney has called “Dr.
Johnson’s supremely adult eighteenth century,” it was shockingly unlike anything that had been
proposed before. Wordsworth believed (as he expressed in poems such as the “Intimations of
Immortality” Ode) that, upon being born, human beings move from a perfect, idealized realm into the
imperfect, un-ideal earth. As children, some memory of the former purity and glory in which they lived
remains, best perceived in the solemn and joyous relationship of the child to the beauties of nature. But
as children grow older, the memory fades, and the magic of nature dies. Still, the memory of childhood
can offer an important solace, which brings with it almost a kind of re-access to the lost purities of the
past. And the maturing mind develops the capability to understand nature in human terms, and to see in
it metaphors for human life, which compensate for the loss of the direct connection.

Freed from financial worries by a legacy left to him in 1795, Wordsworth moved with his sister Dorothy
to Racedown, and then to Alfoxden in Grasmere, where Wordsworth could be closer to his friend and
fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Together, Wordsworth and Coleridge began work on a book called
Lyrical Ballads, first published in 1798 and reissued with Wordsworth’s monumental preface in 1802.

The publication of Lyrical Ballads represents a landmark moment for English poetry; it was unlike
anything that had come before, and paved the way for everything that has come after. According to the
theory that poetry resulted from the “spontaneous overflow” of emotions, as Wordsworth wrote in the
preface, Wordsworth and Coleridge made it their task to write in the simple language of common
people, telling concrete stories of their lives. According to this theory, poetry originated in “emotion
recollected in a state of tranquility”; the poet then surrendered to the emotion, so that the tranquility
dissolved, and the emotion remained in the poem. This explicit emphasis on feeling, simplicity, and the
pleasure of beauty over rhetoric, ornament, and formality changed the course of English poetry,
replacing the elaborate classical forms of Pope and Dryden with a new Romantic sensibility.
Wordsworth’s most important legacy, besides his lovely, timeless poems, is his launching of the
Romantic era, opening the gates for later writers such as John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord
Byron in England, and Emerson and Thoreau in America.

Following the success of Lyrical Ballads and his subsequent poem The Prelude, a massive autobiography
in verse form, Wordsworth moved to the stately house at Rydal Mount where he lived, with Dorothy, his
wife Mary, and his children, until his death in 1850. Wordsworth became the dominant force in English
poetry while still quite a young man, and he lived to be quite old; his later years were marked by an
increasing aristocratic temperament and a general alienation from the younger Romantics whose work
he had inspired. Byron—the only important poet to become more popular than Wordsworth during
Wordsworth’s lifetime—in particular saw him as a kind of sell-out, writing in his sardonic preface to Don
Juan that the once-liberal Wordsworth had “turned out a Tory” at last. The last decades of
Wordsworth’s life, however, were spent as Poet Laureate of England, and until his death he was widely
considered the most important author in England.

Analysis

Wordsworth’s monumental poetic legacy rests on a large number of important poems, varying in length
and weight from the short, simple lyrics of the 1790s to the vast expanses of The Prelude, thirteen books
long in its 1808 edition. But the themes that run through Wordsworth’s poetry, and the language and
imagery he uses to embody those themes, remain remarkably consistent throughout the Wordsworth
canon, adhering largely to the tenets Wordsworth set out for himself in the 1802 preface to Lyrical
Ballads. Here, Wordsworth argues that poetry should be written in the natural language of common
speech, rather than in the lofty and elaborate dictions that were then considered “poetic.” He argues
that poetry should offer access to the emotions contained in memory. And he argues that the first
principle of poetry should be pleasure, that the chief duty of poetry is to provide pleasure through a
rhythmic and beautiful expression of feeling—for all human sympathy, he claims, is based on a subtle
pleasure principle that is “the naked and native dignity of man.”

Recovering “the naked and native dignity of man” makes up a significant part of Wordsworth’s poetic
project, and he follows his own advice from the 1802 preface. Wordsworth’s style remains plain-spoken
and easy to understand even today, though the rhythms and idioms of common English have changed
from those of the early nineteenth century. Many of Wordsworth’s poems (including masterpieces such
as “Tintern Abbey” and the “Intimations of Immortality” ode) deal with the subjects of childhood and
the memory of childhood in the mind of the adult in particular, childhood’s lost connection with nature,
which can be preserved only in memory. Wordsworth’s images and metaphors mix natural scenery,
religious symbolism (as in the sonnet “It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,” in which the evening is
described as being “quiet as a nun”), and the relics of the poet’s rustic childhood—cottages, hedgerows,
orchards, and other places where humanity intersects gently and easily with nature.

Wordsworth’s poems initiated the Romantic era by emphasizing feeling, instinct, and pleasure above
formality and mannerism. More than any poet before him, Wordsworth gave expression to inchoate
human emotion; his lyric “Strange fits of passion have I known,” in which the speaker describes an
inexplicable fantasy he once had that his lover was dead, could not have been written by any previous
poet. Curiously for a poet whose work points so directly toward the future, many of Wordsworth’s
important works are preoccupied with the lost glory of the past—not only of the lost dreams of
childhood but also of the historical past, as in the powerful sonnet “London, 1802,” in which the speaker
exhorts the spirit of the centuries-dead poet John Milton to teach the modern world a better way to live.

“The world is too much with us”

Summary

Angrily, the speaker accuses the modern age of having lost its connection to nature and to everything
meaningful: “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!” He says that even when the sea “bares her bosom to the
moon” and the winds howl, humanity is still out of tune, and looks on uncaringly at the spectacle of the
storm. The speaker wishes that he were a pagan raised according to a different vision of the world, so
that, “standing on this pleasant lea,” he might see images of ancient gods rising from the waves, a sight
that would cheer him greatly. He imagines “Proteus rising from the sea,” and Triton “blowing his
wreathed horn.”

Form

This poem is one of the many excellent sonnets Wordsworth wrote in the early 1800s. Sonnets are
fourteen-line poetic inventions written in iambic pentameter. There are several varieties of sonnets;
“The world is too much with us” takes the form of a Petrarchan sonnet, modeled after the work of
Petrarch, an Italian poet of the early Renaissance. A Petrarchan sonnet is divided into two parts, an
octave (the first eight lines of the poem) and a sestet (the final six lines). The rhyme scheme of a
Petrarchan sonnet is somewhat variable; in this case, the octave follows a rhyme scheme of ABBAABBA,
and the sestet follows a rhyme scheme of CDCDCD. In most Petrarchan sonnets, the octave proposes a
question or an idea that the sestet answers, comments upon, or criticizes.
Commentary

“The world is too much with us” falls in line with a number of sonnets written by Wordsworth in the
early 1800s that criticize or admonish what Wordsworth saw as the decadent material cynicism of the
time. This relatively simple poem angrily states that human beings are too preoccupied with the material
(“The world...getting and spending”) and have lost touch with the spiritual and with nature. In the
sestet, the speaker dramatically proposes an impossible personal solution to his problem—he wishes he
could have been raised as a pagan, so he could still see ancient gods in the actions of nature and thereby
gain spiritual solace. His thunderous “Great God!” indicates the extremity of his wish—in Christian
England, one did not often wish to be a pagan.

On the whole, this sonnet offers an angry summation of the familiar Wordsworthian theme of
communion with nature, and states precisely how far the early nineteenth century was from living out
the Wordsworthian ideal. The sonnet is important for its rhetorical force (it shows Wordsworth’s
increasing confidence with language as an implement of dramatic power, sweeping the wind and the sea
up like flowers in a bouquet), and for being representative of other poems in the Wordsworth canon—
notably “London, 1802,” in which the speaker dreams of bringing back the dead poet John Milton to
save his decadent era.

Source : sparknotes

The World is too Much with Us Summary

The speaker complains that "the world" is too overwhelming for us to appreciate it. We're so concerned
about time and money that we use up all our energy. People want to accumulate stuff, so they see
nothing in Nature that they can "own." According to the speaker, we've sold our souls.

We should be able to appreciate beautiful events like the moon shining over the ocean and the blowing
of strong winds, but it's like we're on a different wavelength from Nature. We're kind of like, "Eh."

The speaker would rather be a pagan who worships an outdated religion so that when he gazes out on
the ocean (as he's doing now), he might feel less sad. If he were a pagan, he'd see wild mythological
gods like Proteus, who can take many shapes, and Triton, who looks like a mer-man.

Lines 1-8 Summary

Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.

Lines 1-2

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.

The poem opens with a complaint, saying that the world is out of whack and that people are destroying
themselves with consumerism ("getting and spending").

"The world is too much with us" sounds odd, and could mean several things. It could mean that the
world – life in the city, contemporary society – is just too much, as in "This is too much for me, and I
can't take it anymore."

The "world" might refer to the natural world instead of the city, in which case it would mean that
humanity is so busy that they don't have time for the natural world because "it's too much."

It could also mean mankind or society is a burden on the world, as in "there's not enough space for both
man and the earth" or "mankind has upset a delicate balance."

"Late and soon" is a strange phrase. It could mean "sooner or later," or it could mean we've done this
recently or in the past ("late") and will do it in the future as well ("soon").

Lines 3-4

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

The poem's tone of complaint continues as the speaker describes a rift between nature and humanity.

We get a potential clue as to the identity of at least one of those "powers" described in line 2: the ability
to feel, which we've lost because we've given our hearts away.

The phrase "little we see in Nature that is ours" is tricky, and can mean several, related things. We've
become so absorbed in consumerism – in another world – that we no longer seem a part of nature.

Alternatively, "Nature" can't be "got" or "spent" – because it is isn't a commodity that is manufactured –
so it doesn't seem like it has anything to offer us.
A "boon" is a reward, a benefit, or something for which to be thankful. "Sordid" means "base" or "vile."
The speaker is being sarcastic here, almost as if he were saying "wow it's so great that we've handed
over our hearts…not!"

Lines 5-8

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;

The poet elaborates on man's alienation from nature, claiming that humanity is no longer susceptible to
the influence of the "Sea," the "winds," and basically everything else in nature.

"Tune" is interesting. It can mean "out of tune," in the sense that we're out of touch with nature, but it
also suggests something like "attuned."

The sea isn't literally taking her shirt off here; the speaker is elegantly describing the ways in which
ocean-tides are affected by the moon, or just how the sea appears to him in its relationship with the
moon.

The speaker describes the winds at rest; they are "sleeping flowers" that will howl when they wake up.
Wait a minute, flowers? Howling? Weird.

"For" is more complicated than it looks. It can mean both that we're not in the right tune "for" the
natural world, in the right frame of mind to "get it."

It could also mean "because," as in "because of these things we're out of tune." The plot thickens…

Lines 9-14 Summary

Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.

Lines 9-10

It moves us not. – Great God! I'd rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

In some sonnets, including this one, important things happen in the ninth line; there is a shift or "turn"
that moves the poem in another direction.

While the speaker reiterates the claim he's been making all along – humanity and nature are alienated
from one another – he also tells us how he wishes things were, at least for him, personally.

He appeals to the Christian God (the capitalization means he has a specific, monotheistic deity in mind)
and says he'd rather be a pagan who was raised believing in some antiquated ("outworn"), primitive
religion ("creed").

To wish to be a pagan in 1807 – when the poem was published – would be like saying, "I wish I could
wear clothes or do things that were in fashion a thousand years ago."

Wait a second, he'd rather be a pagan than what? Than someone who isn't moved by nature? Seems like
it.

"Suckled" just means "nursed at a breast" or "nourished."

Lines 11-12

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

The speaker explains why he would rather be a pagan. If he were, then he could look at the land in front
of him and see something that wouldn't make him feel so lonely and sad ("forlorn").

A "lea" is a meadow or open-grassland. Wait a second, wasn't the speaker just telling us about "this
sea"? How did we get to the meadow? Maybe he's standing in a meadow overlooking the sea.

The speaker wants "glimpses" of something, but we don't know what; he suggests that if he were a
pagan he would only see things in snatches, for a brief moment, in the blink of an eye.

And this isn't even guaranteed; he says he "might" have "glimpses."

Lines 13-14

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

The speaker elaborates on those potential "glimpses." He says he might see Proteus coming out of the
ocean or Triton blowing his horn.

Proteus is a sea god in Greek mythology. He had the ability to prophesy the future, but didn't like doing
it. If someone grabbed a hold of him and tried to make him predict the future, he would change his
shape and try to get away. The modern word "protean" – meaning variable or changing a lot – comes
from his name.

Triton was a son of Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea. He had a conch shell that he blew into in order
to excite or calm the waves.

"Wreathed" means something like twisted, sinewy, having coils; the "wreathed horn" is a reference to
Triton's conch shell.

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