The world is too much with us

Sharon Park

Natalie Robinson

William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850) was born

in Cockermouth, Cumberland England’s

lake district. Wordsworth developed

a great love of nature. The English industrial revolution was in its prime. The political climate in

France and between France and Britain

became hostile and he had to return to

England.

Wordsworth, William. "William Wordsworth: The World Is Too Much with Us." Washington State University - Pullman, Washington. Web. 14 Feb. 2011. <http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/

wordsworth.html>.

The World is too much with us

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 wreathéd horn.

Paraphrase The world around us has so much going on.We waste our time with the hustle and bustle of the worldWe rarely see what Nature has to offerWe have given ourselves away to the worldly thingsThe way the sea reflects the moonThe wind that is present 24/7Like peaceful flowers the world lies at restWe are out of tune with nature and don’t realize all of thisThe beauty of nature moves usA religious person sucked into the no longer useful thingsStanding in a grassy fieldRealizing some things that make me less lonelyYou see the prophetic sea god coming up from the seaOr you hear a god of the see blow his horn

Diction

denotation (Word meaning)

• Late(1) : recently 

• Proteus(13) : a Greek sea god whose power was to change shape at will

• Sordid boon(4) : shameful gain; tarnished blessing

• boon (4): something beneficial bestowed

• Triton (14): sea god head and trunk of man and tail of fish (the male version of a mermaid)

• A "wreath" is a ring or circlet of flowers worn on the head; it is also used to memorialize the dead.

Author used strong diction such as “Great God!”, in order to emphasis his anger toward the materialism.It is both a curse and a prayer: The speaker swears (by his Christian God) his preference for a pagan creed "that would allow him to believe in such mythical nature deities as Proteus and Triton, as antidotes for his forlornness.

Tone

The tone is angry, modulated with sarcasm and seeming vengefulness. First, the poet scolds society for devoting all its energies to material enterprises and pleasures. While pampering their bodies, he says, people are starving their souls. He next announces sarcastically that he would rather be a pagan; at least then he could appreciate nature through different eyes and even see Proteus rising from the sea—perhaps to wreak vengeance on complacent humankind. 

Mood

• William Wordsworth creates a mood that makes you question priorities in life. While he is talking about such beautiful things, the mood of the poem is sad. The poem portrays darkness and self-centeredness.

Rhetorical situation

• William Wordsworth is speaking to the people who are taking for granted what is in front of them and the beauty of nature. He is communicating to the reader to open their eyes and see all that is in front of them. He speaks in a way that is direct and implying that a change needs to be made with the way we are so blind to nature.

Figurative language• Alliteration • Line 1: The world is too much with us

Line 2: we lay waste our powers Line 4: We have given our hearts away Line 5: bares her bosom  Line 6: The winds that will be howling

• Metaphor Line 4: We have given our hearts away Comparison of hearts to attention or concern or to enthusiasm or life

• Line 10: suckled in a creed outworn  Comparison of creed to a mother nursing her child

• Oxymoron Line 4: sordid boon. (oxymoron, a form of paradox that juxtaposes contradictory words)

• Personification Line 5: The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon Comparison of the sea to a woman and of the moon to a person who sees the woman

• Simile Lines 6-7: The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers

imagery– We can see, hear, taste, smell, touch in out imagination

through the words of the poem. These are the lines that you can sense throughout the poem.

• Line 3: The speaker describes humanity's alienation from nature as a kind of blindness; people no longer see any similarities between nature and humankind, nor do they see anything in nature that is worth their time.

• Line 12: The speaker says that if he were a pagan he might have "glimpses" of something that would make him less depressed.

• Line 13: The speaker elaborates on those "glimpses," telling us that if he were a pagan he might "have sight" of Proteus rising out of the sea.

• Line 14: Alongside a vision of Proteus, the speaker tells us that he might also "hear" Triton blowing his horn.

soundWordsworth wrote most of the lines in the poem in iambic pentameter, in which a line has five pairs of syllables. Each pair consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Lines 5 and 6 demonstrate this pattern.

1 2 3 4 5 The SEA | that BARES | her BO | som TO | the MOON,

1 2 3 4 5 The WINDS | that WILL | be HOWL | ing AT | all HOURS

• Wordsworth veers from this pattern in lines 2 and 3, in which he stresses the first syllable of each line.

sonnect• William Wordsworth's "The World Is Too Much With

Us" is a lyric poem in the form of a sonnet. In English, there are two types of sonnets, the Petrarchan and the Shakespearean, both with fourteen lines. Wordsworth's poem is a Petrarchan sonnet, developed by the Italian poet Petrarch (1304-1374), a Roman Catholic priest.  A Petrarchan sonnet consists of an eight-line stanza (octave) and a six-line stanza (sestet). The first stanza presents a theme or problem, and the second stanza develops the theme or suggests a solution to the problem.

Stanza• The rhyme scheme of a Petrarchan

sonnet is as follows:  • First stanza (octave): abba, abba 

Second stanza (sestet): cde, cde or another combination such as cdc, cdc. In the case of Wordsworth's poem, the combination is cd, cd. cd.

Conclusion / Evaluation• The way William Wordsworth expressed

his thoughts was very direct and to the point. It made you understand where he was coming from and the difference in the way he views nature and life compared to how we are often blind to it. His imagery and word choice were the strongest in the poem. The weakest effect was his symbolism.

Personal reaction

• We liked it because it made us realize how blind we have all been to nature and to start paying attention to the beautiful things in life. It related to us because it is easy to get carried away by the busy world with all that is going on around us.