The World is too much with us- William Wordsworth [SUMMARY]

 

In “The World Is Too Much with Us,” Wordsworth describes humankind’s relationship with the natural world in terms of loss. That relationship once flourished, but now, due to the impacts of industrialization on everyday life, humankind has lost the ability to appreciate, celebrate, and be soothed by nature. To emphasize this central loss, the poem describes it from three angles: economic, spiritual, and cultural. Notably, the poem does not suggest a way to regain what is lost. Rather, its tone is desperate, arguing that humankind’s original relationship with nature can never be revived.

The poem first presents loss in the economic sense, implicitly blaming urban life for the change in people’s relationship with nature. Because the urban world has “too much” control over our lives, we are always “late and soon” or “Getting and spending.” Modern humans are always losing time or money. As working people in an increasingly urban area, their lives are structured by a never ending series of appointments and transactions.

 

This lifestyle comes at a price: it destroys our power to identify with nature, or to appreciate the world around us. By focusing their “powers” on material objects, people grow unaware of their wider, and arguably more important, surroundings. The result is that nothing in nature—or elsewhere—is “ours.” This is a world where everything—be it a house, stocks in a company, or a loaf of bread—can be won or lost in an instant. By describing nature as something that can be owned or possessed, the speaker may be implying that modern human beings have lost the ability to think of relationships and emotions in anything but economic terms.

The poem next dwells on spiritual loss, though without forgetting that loss’s economic roots. “We have given our hearts away,” the speaker says. Though it uses economic language—people give something away in exchange for

something else—this line adds another perspective to the depiction of loss. The price of material gain and industrial progress is the human heart itself, a symbol of life and emotion. In exchange, people receive a “boon”—that is, they gain something. Yet what they gain is “sordid”—it is dirty and immoral. In exchange for industrial progress, people have reduced themselves to an almost less-than- human state. The speaker suggests that this loss of humanity outweighs the material gain. As a result “we are out of tune” and nature “moves us not.” People have fallen from an ideal, natural state into one of disrepair. Having given away their ability to access deep, enduring emotions, they are numb to the beauty of the natural world, spiritually unmoved by it.

 

In its final lines the poem describes a cultural loss, and its tone of resignation suggests the loss is permanent. The speaker invokes Greek paganism, introducing a version of society in which nature played a larger role in human life. But the pagan tradition is “a creed outworn”—it’s a relic, and no longer useful. Once the speaker acknowledges the uselessness of past traditions, his or her wishes come across as more fanciful than serious. “I’d rather be a Pagan” and “So might I” do not represent what the speaker believes is possible, but rather what he or she wishes were still possible.

As a member of modern society, the speaker cannot access nature in a way to make him- or herself “less forlorn.” This doesn’t mean that nature has been destroyed; the “pleasant lea” still exists, it just doesn’t soothe the speaker. At this moment of emotional despair, the best he or she can do is imagine a past that, in its fullest form, is lost and inaccessible.