The World Is Too Much With Us

William Wordsworth’s sonnet “The World is Too Much With Us” expresses the fact that mankind has lost their connection with nature. The theme of this poem can be linked to his other work “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” as in both he laments the fast paced life style of humanity which is so focused on “getting and spending”(2), feeling that he is one of the few who realizes the importance of nature. Like many of his other works, Wordsworth uses powerful imagery to express his feelings on the subject. Wordsworth says the world is so “out of tune”(7) that people are not noticing the nature around them. By ignoring nature, Wordsworth says that the sea that once “[bore her bosom to the moon]”(5) and the wind that “[howled] at all
hours”(6), two powerful forces of nature, are put to sleep and compared them to a neat, collected bouquets of flowers. It is interesting that Wordsworth has chosen to write this poem in the form of a sonnet, as a sonnet is a very structured form which follows a specific rhyme scheme, iambic pentameter and requires a particular amount of lines. In Wordsworth’s Preface To the Lyrical Ballads, he expresses the need to break free from such formal rules within literature and pushes for what some might consider as literary liberalism; however, he goes against what he was saying by writing this particular poem in a form that has very precise rules. Perhaps he did this in order to gain more readers, and attract those that like the more traditional, formal styles of writing that preceded him.