Poem #7: Response to "The World Is Too Much With Us" by Wordsworth

Poem:

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.

Response:

When reading the title of the poem and skimming through the poem the first time, I was actually misguided by what the poem was about. I thought the poem was about the failed loved of a relationship. However, when I completed the TPCASTT for the poem and read through the poem a second time, I realized that there was no connection to a positive relationship at all. My whole paraphrase section of my TPCASTT was completely off.

Throughout the poem, the author used words such as "sordid" or "creed" to demonstrate the heavy, dark feeling as the tone of the poem. From using first person as a point of view, Wordsworth was able to communicate his opinion of this idea of beauty destroyed and ignored in nature. By looking at the last two lines of the poem, "Have sight...horn", the author relates to allusions of three Gods: Proteas, Triton, and our God. Proteas and Triton have a unique significance of the sea and God represents mankind. Putting those together (the sea and mankind), as a reader I was able to realize the theme of this poem had to deal with nature.

This theme that humanity has lost its respect for nature represents a broader topic in society. Wordsworth implicates his own opinion but when looking at the lines of the poem, as a society, we read this poem and feel the need to conform to a different society.

"Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!" Wordsworth wants us to realize that the beauty of nature has been destructed. Looking at society today, we keep our hands glued to our phones. Society says, "why go out in the world and explore nature when we can explore it through our phones?" But, this poem says, "why not?" 

Beauty in nature is ignored by the ignorance of our generation. This theme not only references this but tries to make us realize what has happened to the world. We, as a society, are literally ignoring our own ignorance to the beauty of nature.