Thursday, October 13, 2016

The World Is Too Much With Us by 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-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 is fairly simple, with the narrator [or "voice"] worn down by the superficiality of life that separates one from the natural world.  He would willingly be a pagan if only to believe that the gods and goddesses of old control and inspire our surroundings with a visceral glory and the anthropomorphic embodiment of nature.

As I'm spending a month with no Facebook page, sealed away even from The Coracle [which has been in existence, in one form or another, by one name or another,for fourteen years], and even surrendering e-mail and cell phone, I have a feeling that "the world" will seem rather far away and nature more present than ever.