The World is Too Much with Us | William Wordsworth
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 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 wreathèd horn.
The World Is Too Much With Us | Important Points to Remember
👉 The poem is a sonnet (14 lines).
👉 The poem is a Petrarchan sonnet.
👉 The poem follows ABBA ABBA rhyme pattern in the octave and CDCDCD rhyme scheme in the sestet.
👉 The poem is written in iambic pentameter.
👉 The Gods mentioned in the Poem are Proteus and Triton.
👉 The poem compares the wind to sleeping flowers.
👉 “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers” – the line suggests that we are concerned with materials.
👉 The speaker wishes to have a pagan background.
👉 The sea gives her bosom to the moon.
👉 The poem criticizes the world of the first industrial revolution.
👉 Sea-god Proteus can assume different shapes.
👉 Triton blows his conch in order to calm the waves.
👉 The three aspects of Nature which tend to charm man are- the moon, the sea and the winds.
The World Is Too Much With Us | Literary Devices
“The world is too much with us.”- Alliteration
“Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn.”- Enjambment
“sea that bears her bosom to the moon”; “The winds that will be howling at all hours” and “sleeping flowers.”- Personification
“Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.”- Allusion
“Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea”(s sound) ; “For this, for everything, we are out of tune.”( f and t sound) – Consonance
“And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;” – Simile
“Suckle in a creed outworn.” –Metaphor. Here creed represents mother that nurses her child.
“We have given our hearts away.”- Metaphor.
“Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn”. (O sound)- Assonance
“the winds that will be howling at all hours”- Assonance
“Sordid boon”- Oxymoron
