I have to do an oral presentation on William Wordsworth's poem, The World is too much...

PLEASE HELP ME! If you can explain anything at all about it I would be grateful. Absolutely anything.

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!
This 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 wreathèd horn

I don't know if teachers still like this kind of stuff, but it used to impress the hell out of them if you could come up with examples from popular culture that would illustrate an idea...
With that in mind, I give you two suggestions: the first is from Don Henley's album, "The End Of The Innocence". The song is called "In A New York Minute."

"Harry got up
Dressed all in black
Went down to the station
And he never came back
They found his clothing
Scattered somewhere down the track
And he won’t be down on wall street
In the morning
He had a home
The love of a girl
But men get lost sometimes
As years unfurl
One day he crossed some line
And he was too much in this world
But I guess it doesn’t matter anymore"

The second reference is in Jimmy Buffet's "One Particular Harbor" --It is not as pronounced, but the idea is very similar, I think...

"I used to rule my world from a pay phone
Ships out on the sea
But now times are rough
Oh I got too much stuff
I can't explain the likes of me"

I always felt like this poem was the result of too many hours spent inside making nice talk with people you don't really like, trying to control too much of a wide, wild world and finally, losing site of why you want to anyway...

bobo

This poem has been discussed before on Emule. If you search for one of the uncommon words in it, like 'suckled' or 'Triton', using the Search feature at the top of this thread, you should find the earlier comments.

Wordsworth is lamenting that people (he says 'we', so he he is including himself) have become so preoccupied with earning and spending money that they have become out of touch with Nature. He considers it a waste of energy to devote all one's efforts to such mundane pursuits. He says people are no longer interested in looking at the moonlit sea, or feeling the night winds. Though he doesn't say so directly, he seems to be saying that people have thereby become out of touch with God; so God is absent from their lives (including, presumably, his own). He feels so unhappy about this that he says he would even be happier if he was [implicitly not a Christian, but] a pagan, like one of the ancient Greeks who believed in a pantheon of nature-spirit Gods, including the god of the sea, Triton (called Neptune by the Romans) and Triton's son, Proteus (who could change shape at will, and often took the form of a seal), because then he could look at the sea and see, or imagine seeing, the continued presence of the gods of his religion.

As often with a Wordsworth poem, when you paraphrase and analyse the meaning, you find that the train of logic isn't quite as smooth and elegant as its expression in the poem.

Ian



Post Edited (01-11-05 21:51)

Here are some previous discussions:

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Les

hi,
I am currently working on a essay for the poem "the world is too much with us" I am having a tough time coming up with a good thesis. Everything else just isn't good....do you have any idea or comments that can help me?
Thanks alot
Chelsea

Chelsea, can you explain a bit more clearly what it is that you are required to do or trying to do in your essay?