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The World is Too Much With Us
by 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.
________________________
This fourteen line poem by William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) is an Italian/Petrarchan sonnet (14 lines). The meter is iambic pentameter (though to arrive at this meter consistently some words must be spoken without clear modern syllable enunciation.) The poem has a rhyme scheme of ABBA, ABBA, CDCDCD.
In a Petrarchan sonnet, the first eight lines (the octave) present a problem and the last six (the sestet) answer the problem and we see that here as well. The point within the poem where the tone shift occurs is called the turn, of the volta.
Thematically this poem expresses the belief, on the part of the Speaker and presumably Wordsworth, that humanity is losing touch with spirituality.
Lines 1 and 2:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
The Speaker begins the poem by referring to “the world” and from this term we can soon after deduce that it is a reference – one you might hear inside a church (Rom. 12:2, 1 John 2:15) – to non-spiritual worldly concerns or affairs, such as possessions, money, etc. The Speaker tells us that these things are “too much with us,” which is to say that we spend too much energy on them and thus “waste our powers.” It is not clear specifically what the Speaker means by powers, however, the implication is that humanity has something in its nature which is more than worldly.
Lines 3 and 4:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
These lines give some clues as to what the Speaker meant in Line 2. Nature is contrasted as an opposing force to the world. The Speaker believes that by engaging in a love of money and possessions (things which can be possessed individually), humanity no longer sees something more valuable in Nature (which “is not ours” individually.) He calls the trade “a sordid boon” – which just means it is a filthy gain.
Lines 5 through 7:
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;
Here in line 5 and 6, the Speaker uses personification of the Sea and winds to describe some of the beauty of nature. Personally, I feel this is among the weaker sections of the poem, as the analogies seem to be driven more by completing the rhyme scheme than evoking a relatable visual. The Sea conjures an image in my mind, as does a bared bosom, but I have never thought of the Sea as having a bosom. (Feel free to comment below and correct me if you disagree. Maybe I am also “out of tune.”)
In any case, by Line 8 the Speaker concludes that humanity as a whole has lost sight of Nature’s beauty.
Lines 8 through 10:
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;
First, I think the lines call into question where exactly the turn/volta in this work occurs. Typically a volta is after Line 8 in a Petrarchan sonnet, however, here I think you could argue that the turn occurs during the middle of Line 9 with either the “Great God!” exclamation or the “I’d rather” statement which follows.
Second, The “answer” to the problem of the world, as explained by the Speaker, is an embrace of Paganism.
The Speaker evokes God in Line 9 and states in Line 10 that he would rather be a Pagan “sucked in a creed outworn” than to lose sight of Nature. Presumably, from this outcry, the 19th century Pagans were still in touch with Nature in a way that the mainstream Christian population was not. We can also assume, based on the fact the Speaker describes their beliefs as “a creed outworn” that his embrace of them should be viewed more as a polemic against the status quo than something sincere.
The Speaker believes that God is found in Nature, and thus if he has to choose between the nature-less (and thus, Godless) “world” he has been bemoaning, and overt Paganism that includes Nature, he would choose the latter. Especially at the time of this writing, this is a serious statement to make. He is equating the answer of his problem, which is itself blasphemy in a Christian worldview, as preferable to his stated problem. The Reader can infer then that the problem, laid out in the first eight and a half lines, is an even worse blasphemy than Paganism.
Lines 11 through 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.
Continuing with the answer’s theme which began in Line 9, the Speaker tells us that as a Pagan he would at least get glimpses of the highly prized spiritual world. Line lines 13 and 14 he then refers to pagan deities “Proteus” and “Triton.”
Proteus is an early prophetic sea-god or god of rivers and oceanic bodies of water, one of several deities whom Homer calls the “Old Man of the Sea.” Some who ascribe a specific domain to Proteus call him the god of “elusive sea change”, which suggests the constantly changing nature of the sea or the liquid quality of water.
Triton is also a Greek god of the sea, the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite, god and goddess of the sea respectively. Triton lived with his parents in a golden palace on the bottom of the sea. Later he was often depicted as having a conch shell he would blow like a trumpet.
