The World is Too Much With Us by William Wordsworth
In William Wordsworth's 'The World is Too Much With Us,' this poem heeds warning to his generation. This warning is that they are losing sight of what is actually important in this world: nature and God. To some people both of these are the same thing '...as if lacking appreciation for the natural gifts of God is not sin enough, we add to it the insult of pride for our rape of His land' (Wordsworth). With his words, Wordsworth makes this message perpetual and everlasting. William Wordsworth loved nature and based many of his poems on it. He uses very strong diction to get his point and feelings across. This poem expresses Wordsworth's feeling about nature and religion containing a melodic rhythm (Wordsworth). Each line and each word were chosen very carefully to express his thoughts and feelings. His references to God and Greek Gods catch the reader's eye to find out why he connects God to nature (Gill). His soft tones and harsh words make the reader feel and see what the speaker does.
This relatively simple poem angrily states that human beings are too preoccupied with the material and have lost touch with the spiritual and with nature. The first part, the octave, of "The World Is Too Much with Us" begins with Wordsworth accusing the modern age of having lost its connection to nature and everything meaningful: "Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; /Little we see in Nature that is ours; /We have given our ...
By again experiencing now what he did five years ago, Wordsworth’s imagination is able to bring together both of these experiences. Therein, Wordsworth is operating on another level within his imagination: “Almost suspended, we are laid asleep / In body, and become a living soul / While with an eye made quiet by the power / Of harmony, and the deep power of joy / We see into the life of things” (NAEL, D, 289, ll.47-49). Here, his revisiting of Tintern Abbey stirs in him an explicitly greater understanding of the world. In thinking on the “body” and “living soul”, Wordsworth perceives the “deep power of joy” in this oneness of the universe. At the heart of this oneness, Wordsworth describes nature as “the anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse / the guide, the guardian of my heart, and the soul / Of all my moral being” (NAEL, D, 291, ll.109-111). Through his journey into the imagination, Wordsworth claims nature to be his moral compass. He delves into the Romantic imagination through nature and finds a greater understanding of the world and his place in
Step 1: The tone of this poem is mostly anger combined with a sense of sarcasm. Woodsworth continuously castigated humans on continuously putting their energy and interests into material things. He sarcastically exclaimed that he would rather be a Pagan suckled in creed watching Proteus rising from the sea and her Triton blowing on his conch shell than be in a world of people that he was ashamed of. Woodsworth seemed to want fresh perspective of nature while watching all the ungrateful people of the world be held in a wrath for their fixation on materialism. Woodsworth used first person plural in the first eight lines of the poem while he then transitioned into first person singular. He utilized “we, us, and our” to make it known that humans, even himself, need to pay more attention towards what the world has for us. The transition from “we” to “I” helped to parallel the effect of the poem from becoming preach-like since he probably deserved some blame. Most of the lines were written in iambic pentameter. Each pair consisted of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable which were displayed in lines 5 and 6. Wordsworth's sonnet is of the Petrarchan variety and there are also several types of beats that give the poem a sense of variation. There was also metaphor, simile, and alliteration involved in the poem. Alliteration was used when he made the sea sound as if it were a human (“bares her bosom”). He then compared a musical instrument as humanity for he felt that humanity was beginning to be in less unison with nature which ties into metaphor. The seventh line of the poem brought in simile as he used “like” to make the comparison of the winds being up-gathered like sleeping flowers. The ultimate them of this poem is t...
To begin, in the poem The World is Too Much With Us, Woodsworth shows the fear of mortality. This poem states the fear of the world, and how it is taking over our minds and our bodies. The older we get, and the older this world gets the more the people in the world stop caring about important things. When money becomes your main source of happiness is when you have lost yourself. To be truly happy the things that make you happy can’t be materialistic. The Greeks thought that nature was controlled by the gods and that is what brought the people happiness. In this poem, Wordworths explains how this is a false accusation. Gupta states, “Wordsworth sincerely believed that materialism was vitiating the life of his contemporaries and as a protest against it he wrote "The world is too much with us." This poem talks about the importance of nature and how much we need it to survive. “Getting and spending we waste our powers. (Line 2)” This quote from the poem is an example of how Woodsworth states that we are wasting ourselves when we could be applying ourselves.
Beauty is always in nature. It is express in many ways. In the poem “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” by Walt Whitman express the beauty in the stars. Just looking up in space gave him peace. Walt writes about the fascination of the stars. How the night sky can transform a situation. He writes experiencing this phenomenon first hand is better than having it told. In most cases, the real is better than the copy. The beauty of the experience is needed, and to see the real thing than what is told. Whitman express how the night sky was all he needed and his feelings. In the poem “The World Is Too Much with Us” by William Wordsworth, the premise is like Whitman poem. It is the beauty in nature, and how people are not looking for nature to inspire. People are just looking less of nature. Both works show the worldly influence in people’s life. In both pieces, Whitman and Wordsworth showing how nature brings true beauty.
Wordsworth and Hopkins both present the reader with a poem conveying the theme of nature. Nature in its variety be it from something as simple as streaked or multicolored skies, long fields and valleys, to things more complex like animals, are all gifts we take for granted. Some never realize the truth of what they are missing by keeping themselves indoors fixating on the loneliness and vacancy of their lives and not on what beauty currently surrounds them. Others tend to relate themselves more to the fact that these lovely gifts are from God and should be praised because of the way his gifts have uplifted our human spirit. Each writer gives us their own ideals as how to find and appreciate nature’s true gifts.
Wordsworth truly emphasized the influence nature had on human morals and emotion. He spiritualised nature and regarded the environment as a philosophical moral teacher, as a mother and even guardian, as the one true elevating influence that was greater than any other. He believed that between man and Nature there is mutual consciousness and understanding, as well as a spiritual connection. According to him, human beings who grow up in the lap of Nature like he did were the ideal humans, the perfect kind. Above all, Wordsworth emphasized the moral influence of Nature as this pastoral influence. “They are second only to nature, which is "the breath of God." (Wordsworth 221). It was his special characteristic to concern himself, not with the strange and remote aspects of the earth, and sky, but nature in ordinary, familiar, everyday moods.Wordsworth stressed upon the moral influence of Nature and the need of man’s spiritual discourse with it “Great and benign, indeed, must be the power/ Of living nature,” (Wordsworth 167). He did not recognize the scary, hideous side of nature, only its
William Wordsworth existed in a time when society and its functions were beginning to rapidly pick up. The poem that he 'Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye', gave him a chance to reflect upon his quick paced life by taking a moment to slow down and absorb the beauty of nature that allows one to 'see into the life of things'; (line 49). Wordsworth's 'Tintern Abbey'; takes you on a series of emotional states by trying to sway 'readers and himself, that the loss of innocence and intensity over time is compensated by an accumulation of knowledge and insight.'; Wordsworth accomplishes to prove that although time was lost along with his innocence, he in turn was able to gain an appreciation for the aesthetics that consoled him by incorporating all together, the wonders of nature, his past experiences, and his present mature perception of life.
Moreover, searching for the different mechanics in each of these poems makes it easier for the reader to analysis and interpret them. To begin, in “The World is Too Much with Us” the way the punctuation is fit into the poem is different since there are many semicolons between each line and one period suggesting that the poem is actually one long sentence. Then I believe the speaker to be someone who acknowledges that he too has lost connection with nature since he’s been preoccupied with other things in the world. This is proven throughout the whole poem since he talks in first person using the word “I.” The tone of this poem is angry, frustrated, and dissatisfied because of how the world has changed. The rhyme scheme is also another appealing mechanic here too since Wordsworth only uses fou...
In his poem, 'Lines Written in the Early Spring,' William Wordsworth gives us insight into his views of the destruction of nature. Using personification, he makes nature seem to be full of life and happy to be living. Yet, man still is destroying what he sees as 'Nature's holy plan'; (8).
This stanza is dominated by the Christian ideas of being made in God’s image. However, man does not remain in that image. His “birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,” and as his life progresses he moves farther and farther from the glorious ideal he had in childhood. Throughout much of his poetry, Wordsworth asserts that in childhood, one can “see” but is unaware of that ability, whereas in adulthood, one cannot see and is painfully aware of his situation. It is only through conscious thought and reflection that man can begin to find a state similar to his original one. The question, then, is why children, who take nature for granted, are given the opportunity to connect so closely with it. It would appear that the fact that children do not realize what they have is the very reason for their having it. Thus, the losing of that knowledge with age allows man to feel the loss, and forces him to find a solution, just as Wordsworth has done. In stanza ten, he tells the reader that the true essence of humanity is the ability to feel pain and have memories of better times. Through these painful or happy memories, man is able achieve the philosophical state of mind, and in the end to love nature “even more” than he did in youth.
Wordsworth recognizes the connections nature enables humans to construct. The beauty of a “wild secluded scene” (Wordsworth, 1798, line 6) allows the mind to bypass clouded and obscured thinking accompanied with man made environments. “In which the heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world, is lightened,” (Wordsworth, 1798, lines 40-43). Wordsworth observes the clear and comprehensive mindset conceived when individuals are exposed to nature. Wordsworth construes nature as a force, delving further into the depths of humans, bringing forth distinct universal and spiritual perspectives. Wonder and awe in the face of nature is awakened within even the most stubborn of minds. The human spirit becomes at mercy to nature’s splendor.
Figurative language is used by William Wordsworth to show the exchange between man and nature. The poet uses various examples of personification throughout the poem. When the poet says:”I wandered lonely as a cloud” (line 1),”when all at once I saw a crowd” (line 3), and “fluttering and dancing in the breeze” (line 6) shows the exchange between the poet and nature since the poet compares himself to a cloud, and compares the daffodils to humans. Moreover, humans connect with God through nature, so the exchange between the speaker and nature led to the connection with God. The pleasant moment of remembering the daffodils does not happen to the poet all time, but he visualizes them only in his “vacant or pensive mode”(line 20). However, the whole poem is full of metaphors describing the isolation of the speaker from society, and experiences the beauty of nature that comforts him. The meta...
Wordsworth is deeply involved with the complexities of nature and human reaction to it. To Wordsworth nature is the revelation of god through viewing everything that is harmonious or beautiful in nature. Man’s true character is then formed and developed through participation in this balance. Wordsworth had the view that people are at their best when they are closest to nature. Being close creates harmony and order. He thought that the people of his time were getting away from that.
William Wordsworth has respect and has great admiration for nature. This is quite evident in all three of his poems; the Resolution and Independence, Tintern Abbey and Michael in that, his philosophy on the divinity, immortality and innocence of humans are elucidated in his connection with nature. For Wordsworth, himself, nature has a spirit, a soul of its own, and to know is to experience nature with all of your senses. In all three of his poems there are many references to seeing, hearing and feeling his surroundings. He speaks of hills, the woods, the rivers and streams, and the fields. Wordsworth comprehends, in each of us, that there is a natural resemblance to ourselves and the background of nature.