Page 188 - DENG103_English - I

Unit 21: Explanation of Seen Passages in Verse

people who are obsessed with money and with manmade objects. These people are losing Notes
their powers of divinity, and can no longer identify with the natural world. This idea is
encapsulated in the famous lines: “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; / Little
we see in Nature that is ours.” Wordsworth believes that we have given our hearts (the center
of ourselves) away in exchange for money and material wealth. He is disgusted at this especially
because nature is so readily available; it almost calls to humanity. In the end, Wordsworth
decides that he would rather be a pagan in a complete state of disillusionment than be out of
touch with nature.
The final image of the poem is of Wordsworth standing on a lea (or a tract of open land)
overlooking the ocean where he sees Proteus and Triton. He is happy, but this happiness is
not what the reader is meant to feel. In actuality, the reader should feel saddened by the scene,
because Wordsworth has given up on humanity, choosing instead to slip out of reality.

O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being—
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes!—O thou

These lines are taken from Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” The first stanza begins with the
alliteration ‘wild West Wind’.The speaker invokes the “wild West Wind” of autumn, which
scatters the dead leaves and spreads seeds so that they may be nurtured by the spring, and
asks that the wind, a “destroyer and preserver,” hear him. The speaker calls the wind the
“dirge / Of the dying year,” and describes how it stirs up violent storms, and again implores
it to hear him. The speaker says that the wind stirs the Mediterranean from “his summer
dreams,” and cleaves the Atlantic into choppy chasms, making the “sapless foliage” of the
ocean tremble, and asks for a third time that it hear him.

Self Assessment

State whether the following statements are true or false:

1. The line ‘O wild west wind’ is taken from shelley’s “Ode to the west wind”.
2. The second stanza begins with the alliteration ‘Wild West Wind’.
3. The speaker says that the wind stirs the mediterranean from “his summer dream”.

21.2 Summary

• As William Wordsworth’s narrator is walking, he notices “A host, of golden daffodils;…
luttering and dancing in the breeze.”
• 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.

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