The World Is Too Much With Us
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 wind 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 wreathed horn.
-- William Wordsworth
Dear Fred,
ReplyDeleteUndoubtedly. And well said. I'm not a Wordsworth partisan when it comes to poetry--I recognize moments of genius and while I don't think this poem rises to poetic genius, it does rise to a sort of poetic wisdom rarely achieved in any art form. Beautiful and succinct, it distills the wisdom of the centuries into a persuasive flow that suggests that perhaps it is time for us to take a break.
shalom,
Steven
Steven,
ReplyDeleteI'm not a Wordsworth partisan either, but this is one of the few of his that engaged me from the first time I read it.
Do you think there's a note of despair here--that perhaps it's impossible to regain what we've lost?