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Featured Poem: The world is too much with us by William Wordsworth

Written by The Reader, 12th December 2016
forest

Our poem this week comes from William Wordsworth and could describe the general attitude to Mondays: The world is too much with us.

It's time to take a few moments out from the rush of Monday morning and enjoy a quite reflection with this week's Featured Poem from William Wordsworth.

Born in 1770, Wordsworth was one of the leading poets of the Romantic Age, serving as Poet Laureate between 1843 and his death from pleurisy in 1850.

The world is too much with us

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.
William Wordsworth

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