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William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

The World is too much with us


              1The world is too much with us; late and soon,
              2Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
              3Little we see in Nature that is ours;
              4We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
              5This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
              6The winds that will be howling at all hours,
              7And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
              8For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
              9It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
            10A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
            11So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
            12Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
            13Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
            14Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Notes

11-14] Cf. Spenser's Colin Clout's come Home againe, 283, "Yet seemed to be a goodly pleasant lea"; and line 245, "Triton, blowing loud his wreathed horne."

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: William Wordsworth, Poems in Two Volumes (1807). See The Manuscript of William Wordsworth's Poems, in Two Volumes (1807): A Facsimile (London: British Library, 1984). bib MASS (Massey College Library, Toronto).
RPO poem editor: J. R. MacGillivray
RP edition: 3RP 2.374.
Recent editing: 2:2002/3/20

Composition date: April 1804
Composition date note: likely in 1803
Rhyme: abbaabbacdcdcd

Other poems by William Wordsworth

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