dots-menu
×

Home  »  The Golden Treasury  » 

Francis T. Palgrave, ed. (1824–1897). The Golden Treasury. 1875.

William Wordsworth

CCLXXVIII. “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-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.