The World Is Too Much With Us Figurative Language Essay

It is a quickly accepted idea that the vast majority of poets have unique styles in their individual forms of poetry. However, it is also important to keep in mind that regardless of any discrepancies in time periods, many ideas expressed have had very similar ideas and views regarding things that have been universal for a very long time, such as the format of society and nature. The World Is Too Much With Us by William Wordsworth and Gerard Manley Hopkins’s God’s Grandeur are two excellent examples of this, as one poet was born only six years before the other died. Regardless, the two poets are connected through their similar views. WIlliam Wordsworth and Gerard Hopkins share similar views but express them through different figurative language
Wordsworth says “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 wreathéd horn”(Wordsworth 11.) Right before this, Wordsworth says that humanity was out of tune and that this is what he would rather see. Hopkins also uses imagery to express his love for nature, saying “And for all this, nature is never spent;/ There lives the dearest freshness deep down things”(Hopkins 9.) Through this line, Hopkins describes how nature is fresh and vividly uses wording to create images in the reader’s head. Both examples from two different poets living in different time periods used imagery to reflect one idea, which would be a love for nature’s
Wordsworth clearly uses poetic devices to his advantage when he says “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers”(2,) utilizing an internal slant rhyme to help intensify the idea that people are wasting their lives by only living based around money, which is a view on societal values. Hopkins has another criticism about society, still complaining about money-based values when he says “And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil”(6.) Interestingly enough, this is also an internal rhyme with the words “seared,” “bleared” and “smeared,” which both go to place importance to Hopkins’s view, saying that everything is centered around working and making money. Gerard Hopkins and William Wordsworth both make use of poetic devices throughout their individual poems to help emphasize their