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Unit 7: The World is Too Much with Us by William Wordsworth—An Introduction

The reader is implicated with the poet (“us”) in “getting and spending” and laying “waste our Notes
powers” to see in “Nature” what is “ours.” “World” as cosmos, as debilitating “system” that
robs people of their perceptions, is contrasted with “Nature,” the benevolent teacher through
which one might learn of his or her inner nature and thus be free of deceit and cunning. The
poet concludes, “We have given our hearts away,” and this is a “sordid boon!”
Wordsworth follows this assessment with a series of images from nature that underscores
one’s ignorance and leads one to an abrupt denouement. The sea and the winds that might
liberate one from world-weariness are depicted as singers or musicians with whose song
people “are out of tune.” The reader is then startled by the poet’s sudden, aggressive “anti-
confession”: “Great God! I’d rather be/ A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn.”

One looks for the “than,” the syntactic particle that would complete the comparison—the poet
would rather be a pagan than what? The implied answer is “a citizen of Christian civilization,”
one who has too quickly been dulled to the glories and lessons of “the pleasant lea” on which
he stands.
He feigns, in conclusion, to prefer the ancient mythology, so dated, yet so contemporary, that
would bring him “glimpses” of “Proteus rising from the sea” or “old Triton blow[ing] his
wreathed horn.” From beginning to end, the sonnet is seen as an unrelenting attack on superficiality
and conventionality in faith and in human motivation promoted by the fixed contours of “the
world.”

Self Assessment

1. The literary movement we now call Romanticism, was founded by

(a) PB Shelley (b) Coleridge
(c) William Wordsworth (d) Both (b) and (c)
2. Triton is in Greek mythology,
(a) sea god (b) animal
(c) a bird (d) None of these
3. The sonnet is typically a poem composed of

(a) fourteen lines (b) twelve lines
(c) thirteen lines (d) None of these

7.2 Summary

• The speaker complains that “the world” is too overwhelming for us to appreciate it.
We’re so concerned about time and money that we use up all our energy. People want
to accumulate stuff, so they see nothing in Nature that they can “own.” According to
the speaker, we’ve sold our souls.
• We should be able to appreciate beautiful events like the moon shining over the ocean
and the blowing of strong winds, but it’s like we’re on a different wavelength from
Nature. We’re kind of like, “Eh.”
• The speaker would rather be a pagan who worships an outdated religion so that when
he gazes out on the ocean (as he’s doing now), he might feel less sad. If he were a
pagan, he’d see wild mythological Gods like Proteus, who can take many shapes, and
Triton, who looks like a mer-man.

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