“The World is Too Much with Us “ By William Wordsworth (1770 –1850)

Third Lecture
“The World is Too Much with Us “ By William Wordsworth (1770 –1850)

"The World Is Too Much with Us" is a sonnet by the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth. In This sonnet , Wordsworth criticises the world after the First Industrial Revolution for being absorbed in materialism and distancing itself from nature. Angrily, the speaker accuses the modern age of having lost its connection to nature and to everything meaningful: “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!” When the winds howl, humanity is still out of tune, pays no attention at the spectacle of the storm. The speaker would rather be a pagan who worships an outdated religion so that when he gazes out on the ocean, he might feel less sad. If he were a pagan, he would have glimpses of the great green meadows that would make him less dejected

More to discuss in this Poem:
1-The features of the Romantic poetry.
2- The Poetic devices.
3-The significant of using classical allusions in this poem.
4- The Themes in the Poem.