Criticism / Divorced from Nature

William Wordsworth’s Petrarchan sonnet “The World Is Too Much With Us” is poem just as deferential now as it was during Wordsworth’s time. His sonnet is divided into two parts: Octave, which details Wordsworth’s question or idea, and Sestet, which condemns his proposed query or notion. The Wordsworthian ideal that human beings have divorced themselves from Nature to marry the acquisitive world of opulence is the claim he notes in this sonnet. Moreover, Wordsworth believes the Gordon Gekko’s of the world steer human beings into a world full of sin, not a world of rectitude; Wordsworth, indeed, proposes that “Greed, for lack of a better world, is [not] good” for humanity since it demolishes our view of Nature.

Wordsworth tells his readers in the opening lines that a marriage with Materialism is a doom one, not only for future generations, but also for the current generation: The world is too much with us; late and soon, / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers” (1-2). He angrily claims that humanity has lost our faith with nature to chase after the money trail. Furthermore, we are too busy making and spending our money to realize that we have “given our hearts away” to the Spirit of Greed rather than the Spirit of Nature (3).

Although Wordsworth wrote this sonnet during England’s Industrial Revolution, his claim is still alive in our historical context today; for example, Americans dependence for foreign oil. Most Americans today have to work more to support the same lifestyle they had before the oil crisis; therefore, we do not have the time to look at the flowers growing, let alone smell them, since we have accepted the urbanization over nature.

Nonetheless, he embodies Nature as a woman whom we, like the Brits, cannot appreciate her genuine splendor even when she “bares her bosom to the moon” (5). Since we have sunk our teeth into the fruit of greed, we do not even hear if Nature is animate or dead: “The winds that will be howling at all hours, / And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers” (5-7).

Thus, Wordsworth deems humanity has once again fallen from grace; he declares, “[W]e are out of tune [with Nature]” (8). He further illustrates his rage with humanity by ending his octave with an enjambment; the vehemence Wordsworth feels about materialism cannot be grasp in one line, so he spills it over into his sestet: “It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be / A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn” (9-10).

As readers, we must comprehend the world Wordsworth was dwelling in. The Industrial Revolution extended like a wildfire both in England and in the States; the populace was shifting their lifestyle by relocating into the cities on the promise of making money; while as, Wordsworth’s “pleasant lea” was dwindling (11).

In addition, Wordsworth felt the Christian world became a part of the quandary too: he believed Christians were followers rather than leaders. So he yearns for the Pagan world because the Pagans believed in the powers of nature; they believed in the Pantheistic ideal, much like Wordsworth, that Nature is a robust deity, whose vigor could salvage and influence humanities’ spirit.

Moreover, Pantheists believed once the marriage between humanity and nature was severed that humanity was no longer equate with its universe. He closes his sestet with the allusions of two Greek Mythology gods: The sea god Proteus and a minor sea god Triton. Wordsworth would like nothing more than to stand on his picturesque meadowland and heed Triton blow in his shell-trumpet, yet, as we know, Triton’s trumpet is out of tune, as we are today. He hears no sounds, except the snoring from those quiescent flowers.

Works Cited
Palgrave, Francis T. The Golden Treasury. London: Macmillan, 1875; Bartleby.com, 1999. www.bartleby.com/106/. [8/12/08].

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