Poem Post #8; Responding to: 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 wreathèd horn.

       This poem is straight up criticizing the place that humanity holds in this earth. It starts up by being explicit and to the point. There is no room for us in this world, we simply don't fit. We just take and take, we give up our power to make. There is nothing in nature that really is ours, we have to break down and rebuild to our needs, the earth wasn't made for us. We made the earth to kind of work for us. We bring down forests, we litter the sea, we kill the real owners of this earth, the animals, and once again, use them to feed us and keep us alive. We are selfish and needy. We are all united, but still hurt the planet with our wars. We simply do not fit in. The author would rather be spiritually enlightened, and escape the human body. That way, he would be able to witness and appreciate the beauty and majesty and wondrous features that humans have gone blind to. That's why the author addresses mythical figures such as Proteus. To represent the wondrous ideas we can't see, but would be able to if we became spiritually enlightened. I believe that in the eyes of the author, we need to stop being human to finally fit in this beautiful earth, and stop biting the hand that feeds us. Thinking about it, there is really no planet we can belong to, because the same would happen. Humans are just a coincidence.