THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US

 

                                                                                               

THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US

“The World Is Too Much With Us” is a sonnet written by William Wordsworth  the greatest romantic poet of England (1770-1850). The  poem which is quoted below expresses his revolt  against people’s excessive interest in materialism. His belief is that we should live in harmony with natural environment and not in  the environment of the city. In another poem Tintern Abbey, he says:

A presence that disturbs me with joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.

 

The text of The World Is Too Much With Us reads as follows:

 

“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-gather’d now like sleeping flowers,

For this, for every thing, 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 in 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 wreathed horn.

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Notes: 1. A pagan is a person who holds religious beliefs that are not part of any of the world’s main religions. 2. Proteus:  In Greek mythology ‘The old man of the sea’ who could assume any shape or form. 3. Triton: a Greek god of the sea who lived with his parents in a golden palace on the bottom of the sea.

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G.R.Kanwal

13 June 2024