Page 187 - DENG103_English - I

English–I

Notes 21.1 Example

As William Wordsworth’s narrator is walking, he notices “A host, of golden daffodils;…
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.” (4 and 6). Wordsworth goes on to describe these
“golden daffodils” as a vast plot of swaying flowers around the fringes of a bay, outdoing the
beauty of the ocean’s waves with their own golden oscillation. Describing the daffodils for
the next several lines, Wordsworth helps us to visualize what he himself has seen and was so
moved by; “Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. / The waves beside them danced; but they
/ Out-did the sparkling waves in glee”.
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!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

Notes The virtue of William Wordsworth’s “The World is Too Much with Us” is found
in its romantic imagery of a fantastic ancient lifestyle that has, according to Wordsworth,
become lost to us through our civilization.

Wordsworth draws the reader into a world where the elements and forces of nature have
sensual personalities and mighty gods commanding them, animating them to give his Romantic
appeal the passionate grandiosity that seems to be a cornerstone of the poetical assertion we
find in “The World is Too Much with Us”
William Wordsworth illustrates in “The World is Too Much with Us” how, in the early 19th
century, mankind is plagued by materialism and the monotonies of wasted time in capitalistic
pursuits. Wordsworth describes us as “lay(ing) waste to our powers” (2) and being so far
removed from our roots that “Little we see in Nature that is ours” (3). Wordsworth exposes
us as once being spiritual creatures with a place in nature, but through our modern day
delusions “We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!” (4). In “The World is Too Much
with Us” Wordsworth describes how we have ceased to be the divine vessels we once were
when we worshiped nature. Humanity, in essence, has become, to William Wordsworth, a
spiritual shell who slaves towards empty and shallow ends.
The following lines of William Wordsworth’s “The World is Too Much with Us” are emotionally
powerful images of vivacious and uninhibited wild nature pouring their hearts into their
passions: “(the) Sea that bares her bosom to the moon”.

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.

“The world is too much with us” is a sonnet with an abbaabbacdcdcd rhyme scheme. The
poem is written from a place of angst and frustration. All around him, Wordsworth sees

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