Another by Wordsworth
Last week, a reader gave us the wonderful poem, “Daffodils”, by Wordsworth in response to my Spring poems by Robert Frost. That reminded me of my favorite Wordsworth poem:
The World is Too Much With Us (1806)
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.–Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
I remember when FAX machines were new, and I found them rather annoying (I’ve never been an ‘early adopter’ of technolgy). There could be no more decent intervals between a request and fulfilling that request, no more thoughtfully composed business letters, less space in which to solve problems or search for answers. As it turned out, that was just the beginning. What would Wordsworth make of us today, with our consumer culture and our blackberries, cell phones, internet and faxes? And blogs, of course! Yet, for me this poem is not just about materialism; it speaks to a loss of innocence, of belief that things like art, beauty and poetry can matter. Yet, I am still a romantic; perhaps, through blogging and grassroots communities, we can come around again to appreciation and care for nature, as well as poetry.