The World is Too Much With Us by William Wordsworth | Structure, Summary, Analysis

 

The World is Too Much With Us by William Wordsworth | Structure, Summary, Analysis

Hello and welcome to the Discourse. ‘The World is Too Much With Us’ is a poem, a sonnet by William Wordsworth published in his poetry collection ‘Poems: In Two Volumes’ in 1807. William Wordsworth is one of the central figures of the English Romantic movement. The English Romantic movement wasn’t a lovey-dovey stuff, rather it was about an obsession with nature, spirituality, and humanism. The Romantic poets wrote about mountains, lakes, flowers, birds, and serenity of the rural life, and they also wrote about gross inequalities among social classes, industrialization, the government, etc. In ‘The World is Too Much With Us’, the speaker laments the withering connection between humankind and nature, blaming industrial society for replacing that connection with material pursuits. Wordsworth composed the poem in 1802, a period of the First Industrial Revolution that thoroughly transformed British life.

Structure of The World is Too Much With Us:

William Wordsworth composed this poem as an Italian sonnet, also known as the Petrarchan sonnet. A traditional sonnet contains an Octave ( two quatrains) in which the speaker discusses or raises a problem or ‘proposition.’ The other part is a sestet beginning with a volta or a ‘turn’ in which the speaker offers a resolution to the problem or his individual perspective about the problem.

The Word is Too Much With Us follows the traditional form. In the Octave, the speaker explains the problem and its consequences, which is that industrial society has killed humankind’s connection with nature. The poet introduces the volta in the ninth line by using an ‘apostrophe’ in the middle line, ‘Great God’ asking for Almighty's intervention. In the remaining lines of the sestet, the speaker uses first-person singular pronouns, offering his personal perspective and resolution.

The sonnet generally follows Iambic Pentameter though there are significant variations as he has used spondee and trochee in some lines.

Assonance, Alliteration, Consonance, Apostrophe, Anaphora, Personification, Metaphor, and Simile have been used in the poem.

Summary of The World is Too Much With Us:

Lines 1-2

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

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—”

The poem begins as the speaker laments that ‘the world is too much with us.’ It becomes clear that he is talking about worldly cares and concerns such as money, possessions, and power, and that ‘us’, or we are too much greedy. The world may refer to the natural world but the first person plural pronoun ‘us’ makes it clear that the speaker is talking about the corruption, and pollution of the natural world by us, human beings. He says that by using our time, minds, and energy in “getting and spending” we “lay waste our powers”. He is accusing the materialistic pursuit of pleasure or consumerism. We continue to strive to attain more and more power to spend on wasteful things and thus, we waste our energies while corrupting the world.

Lines 3-4

“Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!”

In these lines, the speaker mentions the rift between society and nature. He says that while people spend their time acquiring worldly possessions, the true beauty of the earth cannot be owned. He says that while people are greedy for land, property, and natural resources to squeeze more and more of materialistic wealth, very few things that people see in Nature actually belong to them. He laments “We have given our hearts away,” that instead of taking pleasures from the wonders of the natural world, we continue to exploit it, ruin it, corrupt it.

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;”

In these lines, the speaker describes the wonder of beautiful nature that we are ignoring, corrupting, and destroying for our greed. He depicts the sea, the wind, and the flowers and uses Personification to offer a greater connect with the nature. In the fourth line, he laments again that we, the greedy humans are unable to observe them. We are missing out on these by being caught up in worldly possessions and greed. He exclaims that “we are out of tune” with nature because we are so caught up in worldly wealth.

Lines 9-10

“It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;”

In the ninth line, the speaker brings the ‘turn’ or ‘volta’ to change the rhetoric and begins using first-person singular pronouns, offering his own perspective towards the drastic situation he mentioned before. The poet uses ‘apostrophe’ to address the Christian God, mentioning that the destruction of nature doesn’t move ‘us’ the human society, and thus, he would rather be a Pagan than be out of touch with nature. So why does the speaker wish to be a Pagan?

Lines 11-14

“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.”

In these lines, the poet clarifies why he would rather prefer to be a Pagan rather than a modern human harming nature. Pagans used to worship and revere various parts of nature by imagining a deity representing them. Being nature worshipers, they used to maintain the sanctity and beauty of nature instead of obsessionally exploiting it for their own greed for power. He mentions Proteus, the Greek Sea God in line 13. Homer mentioned Proteus as ‘The old man of the sea.’ Proteus had the power to foretell the future but he avoided wasting his power. The speaker says that he would rather be close to Proteus and learn how to avoid wasting his powers. In line 14, he mentions Triton, another Greek deity representing the Sea. Triton is often depicted with his conch shell that he would blow to calm down the wild waves of the sea. The speaker mentions these Pagan gods to suggest that he would rather be a Pagan than be alienated from nature and engaged in corrupting it.

So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!