Question

After you have read the poem thoroughly, present your analysis of the poem in an essay. Think of a major claim that you can make about the poem and build an argument to support that claim using evidence from the text. (An essay that contains such an argument is called an explication of a poem.) Your claim may be a specific interpretation of the poem, a view about the poet's attitude toward the subject, the relationship of the subject to the historical context of the poem, the significance of some element of the poem's form, or another similar type of analysis.
"The World Is Too Much with Us" by William Wordsworth

Answer 1

Answer and Explanation:

In his sonnet "The World is Too Much with Us", William Wordsworth criticizes society's distancing from Nature due to the Industrial Revolution. More specifically, he seems to be disappointed with society's materialism and greed, which inevitably lead to a separation between people and the natural world.

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

The lines above express such horrendous fact. Concerned only about money, "getting and spending," human beings have ceased to perceive themselves as a part of Nature. We do not belong to it; it does not belong to us. We have lost the most basic understanding of how connected everything on the planet is. "We have given our hearts away" to profit, to greed, to buying and selling in order to make even more money.

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. [...]

Nature and society are now in disharmony. The original relationship has been severed, permanently, since human beings can no longer live without industries, machines, pollution, mass production, etc. What moves us is not love for Nature, is not the sense of belonging, is not the notion that the planet is our home. In a way, we lost our spirits, sold our souls, forgot where we came from. No wonder the speaker would rather be a pagan - worshiping Nature, believing in old gods, keeping his eyes and heart open to what is truly beautiful in the world:

[...] 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.