Page 93 - DENG104_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_I

Elective English–I

Notes call to arms, a rallying cry to cease “getting and spending” with the coinage of heaven and
to turn to a “creed outworn” for sustenance and guidance.
In this, the sonnet reflects the poet’s quite explicit preoccupation with expressing the nature
and consequences of self-consciousness for an appreciation of nature’s role in forming the
human spirit. In commenting upon his poetics, Wordsworth offered that “the study of human
nature suggests this awful truth, that, as in the trials to which life subjects us, sin and crime
are apt to start from their very opposite qualities.” In other words, whatever merits Christian
civilization may have presented, its excesses breed the very behaviours and social conditions
that cause its dissolution.
This sentiment is in line with the sonnet’s poetic form and theme, and with the poet’s own
testimony about his life in the autobiographical work, The Prelude. Therein Wordsworth suggests
that he had sought a rudder for the future by attaining a clear sense of his own past, and not
merely the historian’s pseudo-objective reconstruction of the past.
That past, the past of each person, is available for introspection, and thus evaluation, in the
poet’s view only to the extent that one breaks free of the “world” as a prison house. To regain
“our powers,” people must get “in tune” with nature’s melodies. The alternative—from the
perspective of the sonnet and the poet himself—is to reap captivity of spirit and poverty of
soul. Hence, “The World Is Too Much with Us” is a prototypical Romantic anthem, impishly
prodding readers to reconsider the basis of their transcendent faith and their despair at reclaiming
nature for their own purposes.

Tone
.......The tone is angry, modulated with sarcasm and seeming vengefulness. First, the poet
scolds society for devoting all its energies to material enterprises and pleasures. While pampering
their bodies, he says, people are starving their souls. He next announces sarcastically that he
would rather be a pagan; at least then he could appreciate nature through different eyes and
even see Proteus rising from the seau0097perhaps to wreak vengeance on complacent humankind.

Symbols, Imagery, Wordplay

There’s more to a poem than meets the eye.

Nature

“The World is Too Much with Us” is obsessed with nature; in fact, the central complaint of
the poem is that people are so consumed by consumerism that they are no longer moved by
nature. But there...

The Senses

In a poem concerned with our inability to be moved by nature, it is no surprise that the senses
are invoked on several occasions. The speaker suggests that our obsession with “getting and
spending”...

Feelings

Wordsworth is one of the Romantic poets, and they were always talking about their feelings.
This poem is no exception, only the rhetoric is more subtle than usual. It is not only humanity’s
inabilities...

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