The World Is Too Much With Us 'And The Sea View' By Charlotte Smith

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Amanda Erikson
ETS 114: Survey of British Literature, 1789-Present
Professor Mike Goode
24 September 2014

Essay Assignment #1

The two sonnets, “The World Is Too Much With Us” by William Wordsworth and “The Sea View” by Charlotte Smith, were both written during the romantic period in Britain, in response to the Industrial Revolution and advanced industrial production. Both poems present a problem in the octave followed by a solution in the sestet. Wordsworth has an angry tone; he is frustrated with society because there is no longer a connection to nature in people. The focus of people is solely on materialism, and not what Wordsworth regards in upmost importance, nature and divinity. Smith’s poem starts in a much different direction than …show more content…

In their poetry, Wordsworth and Smith both instilled the point that humanity has lost the connection to the beauty of nature; thus a detachment to divinity, because of the need for destruction in society. Wordsworth is plagued by societies inability to conform to his beliefs on nature, in “The World is Too Much With Us”. In the octave of the poem he states, “late and soon / Getting and spending, we lay waste to our powers (ll. 1-2)”. Wordsworth has given up hope, giving that society has “powers (l. 2)”, that are not being put into effect and most likely never will be. The focus of society has been drawn further away from nature and has been put on “getting and spending”, the self-centered acts of materialism. He states that is what has been happening and will continue to happen, “late and soon (l. 1)”. With the acts of spending, comes the ownership of the object that is being bought but that cannot be done in nature. A part of nature cannot be called one’s own, “Little we see in Nature that is ours (l. 3)”. Since no one can own any part of nature, it is of no interest to humanity. Nature should not exclusively be appreciated because of

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