Wordsworth's+The+World+Is+Too+Much+With+Us

Introduction
 William Wordsworth (April 7, 1770 - April 23, 1850) was considered the poet who, with Samuel Coleridge, launched the Romantic Period with their joint publication of [|Lyrical Ballads] in 1798, where his most noted contribution remains The Preface, detailing the nature of the collection, as it looks to reach out to the common man, placing verse in a form to which he can relate. Of Wordsworth's most noted contributions to the poetic realm, his sonnets remain the forces that resonate above all else, encompassing the "sense sublime" Wordsworth feels through Nature and the empowering religious connection he forges.

//The World is Too Much With Us//

The world is too much with us; late and soon, A Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: -B Little we see in Nature that is ours; B We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! --A This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; -A The winds that will be howling at all hours, --B And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; -B For this, for everything, we are out of tune; --A It moves us not.—Great God! I'd rather be ---C A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; -D So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, C Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; ---D Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; ---C <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn. -D

Explication
<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">In this poem, Wordsworth bemoans the loss of individual human talents, lost to the materialistic society in which we live. To Wordsworth, the poet and the common man are placed on the same level, as both have extraordinary talents that could change the world, yet give into the fabricated, falsified life which deviates from Nature and the beauty of spiritual existence. Works by Wordsworth follow the same themes and are representative of the Romantic period, and the sentiments of its writers, which urge society to rely on their spiritual connection and their own artistic talents (seen through nature and its beauty) rather than through logic, reason, and materialistic thought.

Wordsworth and the Sonnet
<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Wordsworth's //The World is Too Much With Us// is a Petrarchan sonnet recognizable by the rhyme scheme and the eight/six line format. In the first eight lines, Wordsworth draws a picture of the awesome power and beauty of nature and comments on humankind's reaction to nature in the last six lines, the common usage of the eight/six structure.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Return to The Romantics and the Sonnet