Page 156 - DENG103_English - I

Unit 16: The World is Too Much with Us by William Wordsworth

The poem’s tone of complaint continues as the speaker describes a rift between nature and Notes
humanity.
We get a potential clue as to the identity of at least one of those “powers” described in line 2:
the ability to feel, which we’ve lost because we’ve given our hearts away.
The phrase “little we see in Nature that is ours” is tricky, and can mean several, related things.
We’ve become so absorbed in consumerism—in another world—that we no longer seem a part
of nature.
Alternatively, “Nature” can’t be “got” or “spent”—because it is isn’t a commodity that is
manufactured—so it doesn’t seem like it has anything to offer us.
A “boon” is a reward, a benefit, or something for which to be thankful. “Sordid” means “base”
or “vile.” The speaker is being sarcastic here, almost as if he were saying “wow it’s so great
that we’ve handed over our hearts…not!”

Lines 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;
The poet elaborates on man’s alienation from nature, claiming that humanity is no longer
susceptible to the influence of the “Sea,” the “winds,” and basically everything else in nature.
“Tune” is interesting. It can mean “out of tune,” in the sense that we’re out of touch with
nature, but it also suggests something like “attuned.”

The sea isn’t literally taking her shirt off here; the speaker is elegantly describing the ways in
which ocean-tides are affected by the moon, or just how the sea appears to him in its relationship
with the moon.
The speaker describes the winds at rest; they are “sleeping flowers” that will howl when they
wake up. Wait a minute, flowers? Howling? Weird.
“For” is more complicated than it looks. It can mean both that we’re not in the right tune “for”
the natural world, in the right frame of mind to “get it.”

It could also mean “because,” as in “because of these things we’re out of tune.” The plot
thickens…

Lines 9-10

It moves us not—Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

In some sonnets, including this one, important things happen in the ninth line; there is a shift
or “turn” that moves the poem in another direction.
While the speaker reiterates the claim he’s been making all along – humanity and nature are
alienated from one another – he also tells us how he wishes things were, at least for him,
personally.

He appeals to the Christian God (the capitalization means he has a specific, monotheistic deity
in mind) and says he’d rather be a pagan who was raised believing in some antiquated
(“outworn”), primitive religion (“creed”).

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