The World is Too Much With Us by William Wordsworth - Summary
The poem "The World Is Too Much With Us" is written by William Wordsworth, the leading literary figure of the Romantic Era in Britain. The poem laments the negative implications of the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Wordsworth complains about the human beings transition from a unique and social creature to a mechanical and materialistic one. He grieves that human beings now no longer enjoys the natural entities which give us a permanent joy and serenity. People become gross and machine like in our thought process. For saving himself from such "disease", Wordsworth takes refuge in nature and imagination and find utmost joy.
According to the poet, we human beings, are fed up with our natural surroundings. We forget to live fruitfully and without purpose. We are wasting our energies and potential on irrelevant things. We don't observe the nature and its beauty. Like a mechanical object, we renounced our heart, our emotional side and the very thing which make us human beings. The act of becoming a heartless being which we cherish as a "boon" is actually disastrous. We ignore the beauty of the view of the sea under the moonlight. Here the poet personifies sea and moon, the sea is personified as a female who is seduced by her lover, the moon. The fast blowing winds that create a howling like noise at all hours are silent now as they are sleeping. All this simple yet calm natural processes are not ignored by us, that's why we are "out of tune".
It depresses the poet that we are not moved by these little, beautiful things and he wished to God that he would like to be a follower of an obsolete-principled religion than being a soulless and mechanical human. So the poet stands on a pleasant land and uses his imagination to mitigate his grief and have sight of Greek Mythological minor sea god Proteus rising from the sea or hear the sound of "wreathed horn" blown by another sea god, Triton.
According to the poet, we human beings, are fed up with our natural surroundings. We forget to live fruitfully and without purpose. We are wasting our energies and potential on irrelevant things. We don't observe the nature and its beauty. Like a mechanical object, we renounced our heart, our emotional side and the very thing which make us human beings. The act of becoming a heartless being which we cherish as a "boon" is actually disastrous. We ignore the beauty of the view of the sea under the moonlight. Here the poet personifies sea and moon, the sea is personified as a female who is seduced by her lover, the moon. The fast blowing winds that create a howling like noise at all hours are silent now as they are sleeping. All this simple yet calm natural processes are not ignored by us, that's why we are "out of tune".
It depresses the poet that we are not moved by these little, beautiful things and he wished to God that he would like to be a follower of an obsolete-principled religion than being a soulless and mechanical human. So the poet stands on a pleasant land and uses his imagination to mitigate his grief and have sight of Greek Mythological minor sea god Proteus rising from the sea or hear the sound of "wreathed horn" blown by another sea god, Triton.