Poetry: themes, forms, and literary analysis

WORDSWORTH "The world is too much with us"

William Wordsworth was a prominent poet of the Romantic Age and this period was characterized by its love of nature and resentment against rapid industrialization. In the poem, "The world is too much with us," Wordsworth has highlighted the changes that he witnessed in the attitude of people and expresses dissatisfaction over rising materialism. The world that we considered extremely fast paced today has its roots in the Romantic period of 18th and 19th centuries when industrialization was taking roots and people were quickly abandoning their villages and rural areas in search of greener pastures in the urban localities. Industrialization was definitely not an easier phenomenon to accept because with rapid movement to urban cities, people not only forgot about their roots, they also abandoned nature altogether. It is this theme that resonates in this poem as the poet dejectedly writes: "Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see in Nature that is ours;" The poet goes on to express his deeper frustrations with people's materialistic attitudes as he laments: "For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. -- Great God!...." His absolute resentment against industrialization was what prompted Wordsworth to create poems such as these. This has been expressed in his own words as Brennan (2003) observes: "Central to Wordsworth's romanticism is the role of poetry to combat the evils of industrialization. In the "Preface" he argues that urbanization and factory life generate the need for a poetry that can strengthen and purify readers' "affections" (735). He asserts, the "increasing accumulation of men in cities" and the 11 uniformity of their occupations" not only blunt the mind's "discriminating powers" but also "reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor" (735)."