Poem Essay i wanted to share :)

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.

The World is too Much with Us. 

I chose this poem because the title caught my eye. Based on the title I guessed that the Italian sonnet would be about how humans harm the earth and don’t realize what they have until its gone.  This is something I have a very big interest in. I do not like how humans, as a whole, treat the earth and I feel it is our job to make sure she is taken care of properly. This will be explained later in the essay. 

After reading the sonnet I realized that my hypothesis of what the poem was about  was right. Being an Italian sonnet it is broken down into two parts: the octave and sestet. The first eight lines, the octave, describe how humans are ignorant of the earth and her beauty.  In line 3 William Wordsworth says “Little we see in Nature that is ours”; I believe that he is saying that we humans have amazing things that nature is happy to provide, we just can’t see it.  The octave mentions the ocean, the wind, and flowers as examples of beauty that is often ignored by many people, in line eight he makes his point: “For this, for everything, we are out of tune”. 

The sestet then changes the topic in a small way. Instead of continuing on the topic of what people are missing, the speaker says how he feels about nature. He goes on to say that he would “rather be a Pagan” so that he can try appreciate what most people take for granted.  So that he can “have glimpses that would make me less forlorn”.  He also mentions he wishes to see Proteus who is a Greek sea god (not the god of the oceans… but a god of the sea) and he also references Triton who is also a Greek god, known as the messenger of the sea.  

I think that the speaker finds the ocean his source of inspiration and sees it as perfect beauty.  He wishes he were a Pagan so that he could pray and see the gods of the sea, so he can appreciate it better. Now, being a Pagan myself, I can understand this.  Pagans often do have a better appreciation of the earth and her gifts and beauties. I too, love the ocean, and have actually spoken to Poseidon, the Greek god of the oceans, and he in turn helped me (almost got caught in a riptide… he helped me and my sister as well as the little kids that were clinging onto us out of the current). It is also very refreshing to see the word Pagan used in a positive light; this is not something that happens very often, especially in literature. 

The overall theme of the poem is that people don’t know what they are missing when it comes to Mother Nature, and that the speaker does see what is often overlooked, but he wishes he could appreciate it better.