William Wordsworth - The World Is Too Much With Us (dramatic reading)

The meaning of the beginning phrase (and title) of the poem is that human beings have become overly concerned with worldy, artificial things, thus growing more and more alienated and separated from the natural world. It isn't by chance that Wordsworth wrote this poem during the period of the First Industrial Revolution, in 1802, to be exact. It is one of several sonnets that the Romantic poet wrote to address, in his own words, "the decadent material cynicism of the time." The poem's core theme is arguably even more relevant to today's world.
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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.
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[@CH7LLE]

awesome really enjoyed this (:

[@JohnReadsPoetry]

Thanks, Philip! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

[@3daysofthecondor]

Well done. And the emphasis in the first line is quite properly (perhaps exclusively) on “with”. I sometimes hear it read with the emphasis on “much”. (Which is so wrong, it’s not even incorrect…)

[@JohnReadsPoetry]

Exactly, thanks for pointing that out. I think the emphasis on "much" is a common mistake that stems from the difference between the way we use the word "world" today, i.e. meaning "the planet", and the more complicated, old-fashioned meaning of the term that would have been clearer to Wordsworth's contemporaries. This old-fashioned meaning was informed by religious thought and still persists today in the adjective "worldly", which means "relating to physical things rather than the spiritual", as in the expression "worldly goods".
So Wordsworth isn't talking about the planet here, and isn't saying that the planet would be better off without us. In fact, he doesn't say that humans are harming the planet/natural environment anywhere in the poem. His use of the term "world" has a negative, polemical connotation, meaning the world of human affairs, characterized by greed and a superficial preoccupation with wealth and status, and serves to underline the growing distance between human society and Nature.
We project our own, modern environmental sensibilities on the poem, but Wordsworth is concerned with Nature in a spiritual sense here, rather than a strictly environmental one. He is describing the sorry state of humankind, so preoccupied with material gain and wordly possessions that it has lost its connection to Nature, a connection that used to provide humans with meaning.
Of course, none of this means that the poem's themes can't speak to us, today, in a way that evokes our justified and very valid environmental worries. That's the beauty of poetry and why I think this poem is even more relevant today than it was back when Wordsworth wrote it, at the time of the First Industrial Revolution. It's just that the title/opening line doesn't mean what some people think it does.
Sorry for the essay.

[@3daysofthecondor]

@@JohnReadsPoetry , no need to apologize for an essay like that! Almost like you’ve given it some thought… 😉
My recently deceased law partner/best friend from university days and I have maintained a running debate for the last 45 years as to what the greatest short verse in literature was with which to capture our own final assessment of the world…
Our wives and girlfriends and children may never have understood why two California trial attorneys found it necessary to resolve that question at 2 in the morning with one last nightcap in our hand so many times over the years, but we both could recite every word of the other’s proposed favorite even if one of us was incapable for some reason. The final verdict on the day would often turn on the spoken delivery, the weather or the quality of our bourbon and smoke.
One candidate was obviously Wordsworth’s “World is too much”, (and he would have liked your delivery, btw). The other candidate was translated from the original Russian (always tricky) and is found in “The Bedbug, and selected poetry” with a now classic introduction by Patricia Blake. The text is as follows, but promise me that if you ever read it aloud, please be mindful of the pauses. Despite Mayakovsky’s natural bombast, this is a quiet poem and should never be rushed. My friend gave this candidate the final nod shortly before he passed, but there’s really not much to choose between the two when it’s all said and done…
It is now I who must apologize for the essay 😂🤔🤫
Past One O’Clock ...
by Vladimir Mayakovsky
Past one o’clock. You must have gone to bed.
The Milky Way streams silver through the night.
I’m in no hurry; with lightning telegrams
I have no cause to wake or trouble you.
And, as they say, the incident is closed.
Love’s boat has smashed against the daily grind.
Now you and I are quits. Why bother then
To balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts.
Behold what quiet settles on the world.
Night wraps the sky in tribute from the stars.
In hours like these, one rises to address
The ages, history, and all creation.

[@sweetyevergreen182]

this was really good ik I'm a bit late to it but I enjoyed it ☺😁

[@JohnReadsPoetry]

Thanks a lot! You're not late. Glad you enjoyed the reading.

[@ayupmeduck5708]

Great God, if I was from a time of old, before Christianity, I would summon the Gods of the Sea and flood this place.

[@Chickensoup3139]

Nice 4 years old but still amazing 😂😊

[@JohnReadsPoetry]

Thanks for your kind words, I'm glad you appreciated the reading!

[@toReasonWhy]

I really love the prosody and reading--but I must say, the emphasis of the most important sentence of the poem is precisely wrong such that it destroys the meaning of the poem itself. Not to be melodramatic, but.
The point is "the world is too much, with us *in it*" not that the world is "with us" too much or too often or that the world is too close to us, or something like that. But the emphasis here eliminates the possibility of the first meaning :\
i.e., as a species we are too much for the world, we are natively broken by default, and we are breaking also the world itself.

[@JohnReadsPoetry]

Thanks for your comment and sharing your thoughts. I think you may be misunderstanding the meaning of the title and opening line.
In the early 19th century there was no such thing as the "planetary" or ecological conscience that you seem to be implying (in particular the type of thinking that, in its most extreme version, sees human beings as a "scourge" on the planet). Such thinking didn't come until about 150 years later.
I mean, I'm sure that even at the time people were worried about what industrialization was doing to the water and air, but this poem isn't actually about pollution or destroying the natural world, it's about being "out of tune" with nature.
"The world" here doesn't mean the planet, or nature. In fact, it has a negative connotation.
The world is too much with us - which world? The world of human society and materialism. Not the natural world, that one we have done away with, Wordsworth tells us. "The world" basically signifies greed and materialistic values in this context.
The meaning isn't that we are too much for the planet, but that materialistic pursuits are at the centre of our value system. That is why the stress should be on "with us" when reading this out loud, and not on "too much".