Poetry Break-A Word from William Wordsworth

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A poet for whom prolixity is often a byword: the veritable apotheoisis of what happens when a poet succumbs to hypergraphia. But there are moments when what he says is said perfectly and captures the mind and heart. So it is with the following sonnet for me today.

CCLXXVIII. "The world is too much with us"
William Wordsworth


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-gather'd 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.

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This page contains a single entry by Steven Riddle published on April 21, 2004 3:13 PM.

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