Poem #8

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.

      In a way I really agree with what the speaker is saying. From what I understood, he or she is saying that we as a species have lost our connection or appreciation for nature. The speaker is saying that we need to begin to (as I am going to relate it to texting) “look up”. We need to take our minds off of the busy lives that we lead to look around at our surroundings. I can’t relay enough how annoyed I am when I constantly see people on their phones. Yes, I will admit that I do look at my phone more often that I should, but I mean even in the car or in an open space like a beautiful park. Look up once in a while to see the beauty that you are constantly walking by. Little moments/details make up the big picture that is our world. Believe me, we are all a little happier when we step back into real life. Anyway, I understand how the speaker is upset that we have become too much of a materialistic society. We focus on the consumption of products and not the impact our consumer society is having on the environment that we call our home. Even in the era that the author had written this he had noticed the changes in the values of the people around him. I wonder what he would think of the fast paced, consumer world that we live in now… He would be horrified I would think. I think about that a lot, if the people who helped build this world could ever imagine how it would have developed… could they ever imagine me sitting here typing this or having the laws we have today? I wonder if they would be proud of our advances or disappointed. In all honesty, I believe that a lot of the builders of our world would be disappointed in the changes/downfalls that we have followed. I wish I has lived in a different time period. then again, any time period has its benefits and negatives.