The World is Too Much with Us by William Wordsworth (Poem, Summary & Analysis)

The World is Too Much with Us

by William Wordsworth

(Poem, Summary & Analysis) 

 

William Wordsworth was born on 7th of April, 1770 at Cockermouth. His father was John Wordsworth and mother was Anne Cookson. He was second of the five children of his parents, the others being Richard, Dorothy, John and Christopher. He was educated at Hawkshead Grammar School and St. John College, Cambridge from where he did his B.A. in 1791. He went to France in 1791 and stayed there for a period of one year. During this time he was greatly influenced by the French Revolution which was at its peak at that time in France. He published his first volume of poems in 1793. In 1795 he got a chance to meet S.T. Coleridge and soon they became life time friends. Wordsworth along with his sister, Dorothy and S.T. Coleridge with his wife were neighbours to each other at Alfoxden and Stowey in Somerset for one year. In 1798, both the poets together published Lyrical Ballads which is considered to be an epoch-making collection of lyrical romantic poems whose preface along with the poems appearing in it attracted a lot of public attention. In 1802, he married Mary Hutchinson of Penrith. In 1805 he completed The Prelude which was published after his death on 23rd April 1850. In 1807 he moved to Rydal Mount, Grasmere and lived there till his death. In 1843 he became the Poet Laureate after the death of Robert Southey.

In France, when the French Revolution was at its peak, Wordsworth felt attracted to it. The aim of the French Revolution was to abolish the kingship and aristocracy and to give full authority to the common man. Rousseau a well-known French writer and who is also known as “the father of Romanticism”. Rousseau once said, that man is born free but he is chained everywhere. Time has come now to do away with the kingship and aristocracy. It would be best for the man to give all the powers to the common man. Wordsworth supported the purpose of the French Revolution whole-heartedly. When England prepared herself to fight against Napoleon, he went to Church and prayed there sincerely for the defeat of England, his own motherland. Throughout his life, he was unable to shed away the influence of the French Revolution and Rousseau on his poetry. From Rousseau and the French Revolution Wordsworth learnt to glorify the life of the common man. He also learnt to love and respect nature. The relation between nature and man became the main theme of his poetry. In being the poet of nature, he also became the poet of the common man.

The World is Too Much with Us

(The Poem)

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;

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 out worn;

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.

Summary

The poet says that the people of this world have become money minded. Their only aim of life is to earn money and then to spend it. They care only to earn lots of money and then to spend it in whatever way they like. In this way they are wasting away their spiritual powers. They are getting away from nature and are now a days unable to enjoy the beauty of nature.

According to the poet, nature should be very important for their lives. The people have become too money-minded and they do not find beauty and peace in nature. They have given their hearts to the god of wealth, which is not good. According to the poet, people have lost their capacity to enjoy the beauty of nature. The beautiful scene of moonlight falling on the surface of the sea does not attract their attention to it. The wind blows very strongly in the day making lot of noise but when the night comes it becomes calm and blows lightly. They do not find these beautiful scenes pleasurable. For them there is nothing special in these scenes. They have no interest left in those natural scenes. The beauty of nature does not fill their heart with pleasure and joy anymore.

The poet is not at all happy with this attitude of people towards nature. He is very sad. He wants people to respect and love nature. He prays God, that he would like to become a Greek Pagan. As a Pagan he would worship nature. He will live in nature and will be happier. He will also watch the Proteus, the sea god in Greek mythology, rising from the sea. He will also hear the Triton, the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite, blowing his horn to calm down the angry sea waves. In this respect the Greek paganism was better than Christianity that has made people money-minded.

Analysis

This poem is one of the many outstanding sonnets Wordsworth wrote in the early 1800s. Sonnets are fourteen-line poetic inventions written in iambic pentameter. There are many varieties of sonnets; "The world is too much with us" takes the form of a Petrarchan sonnet, drawn 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 last six lines). The rhyme scheme of a Petrarchan sonnet is somewhat variable.  In this case, Octave follows a rhyme scheme of abbaabba, and 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.

“The world is too much with us” falls in line with a number of sonnets, written by Wordsworth in the early 1800s. This poem states, that human beings are too preoccupied with the material and have lost touch with the spiritual and with nature. In the sestet, the speaker proposes a 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. Sonnet is significant for its rhetorical power, and for being representative of other poems of Wordsworth.