Quotes from work
The World Is Too Much with Us

William Wordsworth

"The World Is Too Much with Us" is a sonnet by the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth. In it, Wordsworth criticises the world of the First Industrial Revolution for being absorbed in materialism and distancing itself from nature. Composed circa 1802, the poem was first published in Poems, in Two Volumes . Like most Italian sonnets, its 14 lines are written in iambic pentameter.

“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!”

William Wordsworth The World Is Too Much with Us

The World Is Too Much with Us, l. 1 (1806).

“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 wreathèd horn.”

William Wordsworth The World Is Too Much with Us

The World Is Too Much with Us, l. 9 (1806).