This post is about the line by line analysis of The World Is Too Much With Us written by William Wordsworth. In this post you will find out the complete summary of the poem in an easy to understand language. Moreover you will find some extra information about the poet as well as the poem in this post which you will certainly find helpful. Let us find the line by line analysis of The World Is Too Much With Us written 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.
ABOUT THE POET
William Wordsworth was one of the greatest poets of the 19th century, during the Romantic Era. He was an English Romantic poet, who had contributed a lot to forming the Romantic Era, during the 19th century. He was born on 7th April 1770 in the United Kingdom. He took his last breath on 23rd April 1850 in the UK.
Our poet, William Wordsworth is a nature lover and most of his poems are based upon Nature. This poem, “The world is too much with us”, is also up on the nature where he criticises the environment during the Industrial Revolution. This is because, during this era, people were much more concerned about the materialistic objects than that of natural elements.
During this era, William Wordsworth, who was an English romantic poet, had written many of his famous poems upon nature, such as, ‘It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free ‘, ‘On Seeing a Tuft of Snowdrops in a Storm ‘, etc. and “The World is too much with us”, is one of those famous poems.
ABOUT THE POEM
This poem, “The World is too much with us”, had been written by William Wordsworth in the year 1802.During this era, Wordsworth had written many of his famous poems upon nature and “The World is too much with us” is one of them. This is a sonnet by Wordsworth which mostly describes about the World and the people during the first Industrial Revolution.
According to the poet, at the time the world and the people of English were very much concern about the materialistic things thn that of those realistic and natural elements.
THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US
LINE BY LINE ANALYSIS OF THE POEM
LINE 1-4
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 is the first stanza or the first four lines of the poem, “The World is too much with us”. Here in this lens the poet had started the poem by saying, ‘The World is too much with us’, which means this world has become very concern about the superficial and materialistic world than that of the ‘Nature’. He used the phrase ‘late and soon’ in the poem by which he tried to explain that this materialistic world had caused many problems in the past and now also it is dominating thhe Mankind due to the changes occurring in Industrial Revolution.People now, are much concern about materialistic things then that of the nature and natural things.
By this way humans are gradually losing their harmony with nature and its gifts. Now it is, people are more concerned about the money, fame and beauty, and are gradually losing their own identity for this Natural beauty.
LINE 5-8
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;
In these lines of the poem, the speaker, Wordsworth, is just standing alone beside the ocean and looking at the ocean. He feels that at this point, he was feeling that, humans cannot appreciate or be overwhelmed with the two different forms of Nature, i.e., the sea and the winds. This is because the humans are over indulged in appreciating materialistic things and their lust for money to buy more things.
By the term, ‘out of tune’, the poet wants o mean that the humans are now out of tune or they are unaware by the beauty of the Nature.
THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US
LINE 9-14
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.
In these last six lines of the poem, or the sestet part of the poem, where the poet through his words, wants to explain that the power of humanity has been detached from the Nature and the natural beauty and it is not leaving any form of impacts on the human beings.
In these lines of the poem, the poet imagines himself as a ‘Pagan’. He feels that the world of Pagan are more beautiful and they do not worry about anything and could endure the natural things according to their wishes.
THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US
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