William Wordsworth and Robert Frost Humanity Has

William Wordsworth and Robert Frost Humanity has many given failings, foremost of which is the failure to look past the concrete and acutely relate to the spiritual potential that manifests within. Through the lack of this abstract hindsight, Nature and the Sea are strangers to mankind, open only should mankind return to a direct sense of awareness in its environment. William Wordsworth's poem "The world is too much with us" and Robert Frost's poem "Neither out far nor in deep" both touch upon these human failings.

While the themes are generally the same, the methods and imagery called upon to discuss mankind and Nature differ somewhat.

William Wordsworth -- The World is Too Much with Us The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon, The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers, For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.

-- Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; 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 wreathed horn. (Wordsworth, 1888) In this particular case, Wordsworth's poetry sees Nature as "an emblem of God or the divine" (Brians, 1999), where Nature is the symbol of the spiritual world. Throughout the poem, Wordsworth laments humanity's abandonment of the spiritual.

Where past humans venerated their natural surroundings, Wordsworth's modern age replaced their Pagan idols with materialism. Mankind had "given [their] hearts away." Wordsworth sees this failing and illustrates this in his poem. Robert Frost -- Neither Out Far nor in Deep The people along the sand All turn and look one way. They turn their back on the land. They look at the sea all day. As long as it takes to pass A ship keeps raising its hull; The wetter ground like glass Reflects a standing gull.

The land may vary more; But wherever the truth may be- The water comes ashore, And the people look at the sea. They cannot look out far. They cannot look in deep. But when was that ever a bar To any watch they keep? (Frost, 1936) The simple rhyming and description in Frost's poem has the outer appearance of a poem about people looking out to sea.

However, it is evident that there is a further meaning behind the rhythmic longing of searching for answers out at sea, and at the last stanza, a sense of cruel irony hits the poem. It is a showing of people choosing "between land and sea, the human and the inhuman, the finite and the infinite" (Jarrell, 1953). There is a reprimand in the first two lines of the last stanza: "They cannot look out far.

They cannot look in deep." Once again, there is a sense that mankind -- even in this attempt to reach far and wide -- has run ragged and short of its relationship with the spiritual essence, the unknown. Analysis Both poems focus on a basic human failing: the lack of spirituality. In Wordsworth's case, this is blatant enough in his comparison of the forces of nature to the loss of mankind's attunement to the said natural forces.

He mentions the gods of classic mythology to show the reverence they received from the people who worshipped them; this is another example of a spiritual group taking in nature. As for Frost, the talk of spirituality is less blatant, delving more on people's perception of the unknown and the people's lack of imagination.

The people at Frost's beach are looking at the sea, trying to find an answer further into the horizon; yet "they cannot look out far, they cannot look in deep." There is a clear stop that prevents mankind from further perceptive thought. Wordsworth uses the common language in his poem, writing with plentiful imagery. "The sea that bares her bosom to the moon" shows the dependent relations between nature and mankind, in which nature is at the mercy of mankind.

Once more he states the detriment of society's "sordid boon," in accordance to the "winds that will be howling at all hours." Wordsworth also separates himself from the general man, indicating that he is more attuned.