Featured Poem: ‘The world is too much with us’

This famous poem, written in 1807, needs little in the way of introduction. Wordsworth's anguish over the lost connection between humanity and nature is expressed in clear and forceful terms: 'We have given our hearts away' and for what? Mere 'getting and spending':

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 wreathed horn.

By William Wordsworth (1807)

Posted by Chris Routledge