“The world is too much with us...”
William Wordsworth * Track #4 On Poems, in Two Volumes
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Album Poems, in Two Volumes
- #1I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud
William Wordsworth & Dorothy Wordsworth
- #2The Solitary Reaper
William Wordsworth
- #3Ode to Duty
William Wordsworth
- #4“The world is too much with us...”
William Wordsworth
- #5Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
William Wordsworth
- #6Elegiac Stanzas Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, Painted by Sir George Beaumont
William Wordsworth
- #7Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood (Immortality Ode)
William Wordsworth
- #8My Heart Leaps Up
William Wordsworth
- #9Resolution and Independence
William Wordsworth & Dorothy Wordsworth
- #10London, 1802
William Wordsworth
- #11I Travelled Among Unknown Men
William Wordsworth
- #12Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland
William Wordsworth
"The world is too much with us..." by William Wordsworth
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William WordsworthAbout
William Wordsworth uses the sonnet to lament the lack of nature in our lives.
In the first 8 and ½ lines, Wordsworth presents the problem: The world is too much with us.
In the following lines, he provides his personal response to the solution: He’d rather be a Pagan— or believe in Greek mythology...
“The world is too much with us...” Annotated
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!
The 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...” Q&A
What are the form and meter of the poem?
This is a Petrarchan sonnet, which consists of eight lines (an octave) with an ABBA ABBA rhyme scheme with seven lines (a sestet) with an CDCD[…] rhyme scheme. This sonnet is written in iambic pentameter, the most common meter in English poetry, especially sonnets.