"The World is Too Much With Us" by William Wordsworth
For my first poem, I will be analyzing “The World is too Much With Us” by William Wordsworth. At its heart, it is a poem that states a problem in society which troubled Wordsworth: the people surrounding him care too much about materialism, money, and status, to the point that they are unmoved by the sublime beauty of nature.
Below, you will see the original poem, along with a line-by-line analysis that I have created.
In “The World is Too Much With Us,” Wordsworth mourns society’s loss of connection to nature. Worldly cares—material concerns, thoughts of social standing, etc…—are “too much with us,” he says, and it makes waste of our potential to feel—our “powers.” When we look at nature, we don’t feel connected to it because we are too distracted by “the world.” He claims that “we have given our hearts away”—sold our souls to modern society, and adopted all of its frivolous cares as our own.
Wordsworth goes on to describe the beauty we are missing by ignoring the beauty of nature—the sea “baring her bosom to the moon” and the wind resting, like the closed petals of a flower at night—”up-gathered now like sleeping flowers.” (God, isn’t that gorgeous?) He says again that we are missing it—we are “out of tune,” and it “moves us not.”
Finally, Wordsworth goes on to say that he would “rather be a Pagan suckled in a creed outworn.” While he looks out at a beautiful scene in nature, it moves him deeply, and he claims that he would much rather be a worshipper of ancient, long-dead gods so that his fellow worshippers would feel a similar sense of awe looking at the beauty he sees. I love the use of the word “suckled” in this line—Wordsworth longs to be entrenched in a community that takes beauty seriously, to the point where achieving that would be so comforting and nourishing that he would be like a baby in his mother’s arms.
My god, I love this poem. Yes, it is a lament, but it is also an expression of the importance of beauty to the human soul. When we look at the sea, it should thrill us like the sight of a god. By letting beauty pass us by, we are laying waste to the powers we all born with—the powers to feel intensely and to live meaningfully.
I chose this poem as the first installment of The Poetry Periodical because it gets at the purpose of this project: to bring myself, and you, closer to the beauty this world has to offer. I can think of no greater medium than poetry through which to appreciate that beauty.
The world is too much with us. So, let’s read poetry.