Comparing The World Is Too Much With Us And God's Grandeur

With the way our world fails to appreciate nature and its gifts, poets find ways to express their frustration through their work. By doing this, people reading these poems will draw forth a deeper meaning along with a motive for writing in such a way. William Wordsworth and Gerard Manley Hopkins voice their admiration for nature with similar poetic devices in both “The World Is Too Much With Us” and “God’s Grandeur”. Similes are used to help the reader’s understanding of the subject by comparing two unlike things. William Wordsworth states, “‘And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers’” (7). Wordsworth continues to express his exasperation with the world while describing nature. The ‘sleeping flowers’ have the potential of ‘waking up’ or realizing the natural beauty around them. Gerard Manley Hopkins also uses similes, “‘It will flame out, like shining from shook foil/ It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil/Crushed’”(2-4). The first simile is talking about how the energy people use to keep their lives running will burn out with a waving effect- as foil looks when one shakes it in the sunlight. The other simile is saying that the great energy that people are using to build up this new age will soon be crushed. Everything that comes up
Gerard Manley Hopkins asks the rhetorical question, “‘Why do men then now not reck his rod?’” (4). The rod is a biblical allusion to the rod of correction. He is warning people of the consequences they will soon face for their actions. William Wordsworth states, “‘Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea/ Have sight of Triton blow his wreathed horn”’ (13-14). This is a mythological allusion to Greek heroes who were both related to the sea. Ironically, Proteus could also see the future. Allusions make the reader understand what the purpose of it in the poem is, by doing this the author requires them to think or even feel differently about the